


"So, This Isn't a Vampire Problem."

by MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: Here to Watch Girls [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, American Politics, Angel explains things, Angst, Autopsies, Bartender Xander, Bisexuality, Blackouts, Buffy investigtes, Cheerleaders, Crime, Culture Shock, Discord - Freeform, Drunkenness, Episode: s01e03 The Witch, Episode: s03e18 Earshot, F/F, F/M, Family, Guilt, Hacking, Heteronormativity, I'm the Slayer and you're not, Injustice, Mild Gore, Multiple Relationships, Other, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pro-Lifers, Questioning, Relationship(s), Religion, Revelations, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Selective outrage, Selective reasoning, Sleepwalking, Snide Giles, Souled Vampire(s), Superior Buffy, Teen Pregnancy, The Bronze (BtVS), Vampire Politics, Villain Ira Rosenberg, Willy's, Working Relationships - Freeform, expect sequels, getting away with murder, lone Buffy going of half cocked, spontaneous human combustion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:15:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 21
Words: 25,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a way, if you have to have problems, vampire problems are good problems to have.  They are problems you can fight.  Problems you can kill.  And as soon as you do: poof! They're gone.  No muss; no fuss.  Now people problems?  Well... not so much.  People problems are messy and complicated; and as the Slayer, her Watcher, and their Slayerettes are finding out, sometimes the more you try to resolve them, the mussier and fussier they get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Broken Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank: I came early because there's something I've needed to tell you. About your mother and me. Why we split up.... You're old enough now to know the truth.... It was you.... Having you. Raising you. Seeing you everyday. You get in trouble. You embarrass us with all the crazy stunts you pull... Hey, Buffy, let's be honest. Could you stand to live in the same house with a daughter like that?  
> ~BtVS 1.10 "Nightmares"

_**The cavern is dark and dripping. Buffy oozes forward, sliding through thick, syrupy pools of time and shadow. A damp outcropping of rock brushes against her cheek, clammy as the hand of death himself, caressing her tenderly.**_

_**And yet, there is a sense of redness, just-ahead-becoming-all-around. Of power glowing dangerously in a dim but not distant future. Life turned in upon itself. Like cancer, only not. Like undeath. But burning. Like a snake eating it's own tail forever.** _

_**A voice snarls in the darkness. It's barely even human, distorted by rage and pain.** _ **_“Give me the power! Give me the dark! I call on you, the laughing gods! Let your blackness crawl beneath my skin! And I shall look upon my enemy!! I shall look upon her, and the dark place shall have her soul!!!”_ **

_**Buffy stands there, watching the witch from a long way off, though they are also somehow in a small, dark, enclosed space together. As she cries out to her gods, the witch stirs her bubbling cauldron. Her face is obscured somehow, but Buffy can make out that she is watching a young girl, blond like her. Petite. Normal-looking. And no less a witch, no less dangerous, for all that.** _

_**This witch is dressed in white, not black. Her skirt is short and pleated, of the type worn only by cheerleaders and tennis players. Somehow, it makes her look more sinister than the blackest, most billowy robes. As though she is the bride of something. Nothing good.** _

_**The the moment of truth. The witch sniffs the air as if catching a whiff of Buffy's scent, the way a vampire or any other predator would do. She begins to turn and in that horrible moment Buffy knows that she will not have the face of a young girl.** _

_**As the witch is turning, as she is slowly lifting her head, pulling her attention away from her evil brew, for one confusing, terrifying moment Buffy fears she is catching a glimpse of Joyce in profile. A heartbeat later, she is sure it is Gwendolyn Post. But when she finally stands eye to eye with that blond creature, as much demon as woman, it's—** _

AHNT-AHNT-AHNT—WHAM! CRUNCH!

Buffy brought her hand down too hard on the alarm clock, cracking it into a dozen jagged, mangled pieces; which scattered like the fragments of her now vague-seeming dreams. Before the still electrified bits could start to smoke, she jerked the cord from the wall, cursing under her breath, then more loudly as the nightstand toppled over and the lamp crashed to the floor.

When she heard her mother's steps, fast and heavy on the stairs, Buffy cursed under her breath some more. “Honey?” Joyce called out as she barreled through the house towards her daughter. “Buffy, sweetheart, are you okay?” Her voice was high and tight, worried and meaning to show that concern, yet at the same time insistently, desperately cheerful. Hopeful. Relentlessly encouraging.

Buffy pulled her comforter over her head and groaned before throwing it off and sitting up with a sigh. “I'm fine, Mom,” she called, “Really!” But Joyce was at her door, already coming in. “I just knocked the end table over reaching for the alarm,” Buffy explained, meaning to sound apologetic but probably coming off a little defensive.

Joyce leaned against the door, winded but relieved. “Oh, thank God!” then, realizing how dramatic she sounded, “Sorry, Honey, I've just been jumping at shadows ever since...” Joyce's voice trailed off. She looked guiltily away, as though acknowledging something wrong were the same as causing it.

Buffy lowered her head. Joyce had been on edge ever since Buffy had been accused of burning down her second high school. Especially now that she was facing possible suspension from her third school of the year for not actually going to many of her classes.

Buffy knew what shadows her mother was jumping at. Shadows of the recent past. Of bizarre delusions and erratic behavior. Of her life being uprooted and her marriage destroyed by everything she had to do to keep her daughter from going completely off the rails and ending up in jail or a mental institution.

And of the plainly foreseeable future. Her barely launched business already going down the drain. The way an infamous family's will in a gossipy little town, where everyone knows everyone except them. The prospect of having to pick up and move, to start over from scratch. Again. Already. All because of a child she was probably wishing she'd never had by now.

“I'm fine, Mom,” Buffy repeated with desperately sunny conviction and an ironed on smile. “I'll pay for it. Out of my allowance.”

Joyce forced a brave little smile to share her face with two huge, sad eyes. “Oh, Honey,” she said warmly, squeezing Buffy's shoulder, “It's just a lamp.”


	2. My One and Only You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ANGEL What do you wanna know about? Faith? How I felt kissing her, pretending to have no soul? Watching you suffer?  
> BUFFY Well, since you bring it up...  
> ANGEL I hated hurting you, more than I could stand.  
> BUFFY Look, the thing about Faith, I'd understand. You know, she has, you know, that whole bad girl thing working for her.  
> ANGEL Kissing her meant nothing. I don't want a bad girl. I've done that before. I've lived a long time Buffy, and I'm past that. I've been with dozens of girls like her. More.  
> BUFFY Oh this honesty stuff is funnn.  
> ANGEL I mean, there's no comparison. In two-hundred-forty-three years, I've loved exactly one person.  
> BUFFY Ohh...it is me right?  
> ~BtVS 3.18 "Earshot"

The doorbell woke Willow up. She rose from the couch alert and already fully dressed in the clothes she'd worn the day before. She half expected Buffy and the other half the police. Ringing the bell seemed a little formal for Buffy. She was more of a knocker. And she had a key.

But the moment she saw Giles through the fish-eye lense, looking pale and worried and sheepish and hopeful all at the same time, she knew she should have expected him at her door. Where else would he be the morning after last night? Willow refused to listen to the traitorous minority voice that said he might have been in Gwendolyn's murderous arms, might have just come from there, in fact. She let him in, loving him more than ever. And when she threw her arms around him, he pulled her close and held on tightly. “Oh, Willow,” he murmured into her hair, sounding as though he might begin to sob. “Willow, my darling! I've been so worried all night, worried I might have lost you.”

“Don't be stupid,” she laughed, blinking back tears of her own, “I'm not going anywhere. You're my snugglebunny, Mister, and don't you forget it!”

Sighing with relief, Giles followed Willow back to the couch and sat down next to her. His expression became composed and businesslike, already prepared to move on to the next item on his agenda for this early morning meeting. It was odd, Willow thought, the way men could do that, could have an emotional moment, then file it away, a thing completed, and get on with whatever important matter of objective reality they had to deal with. Her dad was the same way.

“Gwendolyn left last night,” he said gravely, looking Willow steadily in the eye. “I woke to find her gone, along with all of her—or more likely Lydia's—things.”

Willow blinked at him, as confused by his tone and expression as what he was saying. “But...” she ventured uncertainly, “...I mean... Isn't that a good thing?” Giles broke eye contact to stare at something off in the middle distance. Willow resisted the urge to turn and follow his gaze. Whatever had caught his attention was probably nothing she could see, probably internal, one way or another.

“Perhaps,” he murmured at last, distractedly. Then, with a slight shake of his head, he was back. “It's important that the Council never get their hands on her, mainly, so that she never has reason or opportunity to betray us,” he agreed, argued and explained, all at once, to both himself and Willow. “My first instinct is to think I'd rather have her where I can keep an eye on her. Especially since we've still no idea of her reasons for coming here, other than that it must be something for which she's willing to kill an innocent fellow Watcher.”

“Which pretty much means we can rule out anything good,” Willow agreed, her face darkening with sympathetic worry. Her voice sounded slightly pouty, even to her own ears. Slightly childish? She wondered miserably, sneaking a look at Giles's expression to see if he has suddenly stopped liking and respecting her because of it.

But his face didn't give away much. He went on orating to no one in particular, debating with himself about the significance of Gwendolyn's departure. “Still, with her gone, at least we don't have to actively involve ourselves in her efforts to evade capture, which would be a crime in itself, on top of everything else. Either way, the Council will inevitably send someone else eventually. And I'd certainly hate to be responsible for that she-devil having a crack at them.”

But they would be anyway, Willow thought, responsible. They, all four of them, had heard Mrs. Post's matter-of-fact, almost bored confession to the murder of Lydia Chalmers, who was twenty-three, hardly more than a college girl. They had heard and they had chosen. To do nothing. To forgo justice for the dead woman and to allow her murderer to remain free. For reasons of their own. To keep their own secrets.

For one brief moment, guilt made Willow consider telling her father everything. But she couldn't do that. Ira Rosenberg was too upright a man, too filled with integrity. And though he loved Willow more than anyone else in the world, he loved truth and justice more. He would have to do what he thought was right. Which would mean having Giles arrested and brought to trial, even if Gwendolyn Post could not be.

Willow on the other hand was not so upright. Not so close to perfect. She could not betray her friends and especially not her lover. Not even if it meant bringing a murderer to justice. Which meant that, although Giles might be of two minds about it, Willow was unreservedly glad that Gwendolyn had vanished without a trace.

The fact that revealing Giles's secret stood almost no chance of resulting in her capture and just punishment relieved Willow of the burden of that choice. It was a relief she desperately needed. Right now her burdens were more than heavy enough.

She needed to think about literally anything else Willow realized, otherwise she'd be cought in this hopeless guilt spiral all day and no use to anyone. “Come on, then,” she said with decisive cheer, the next time Giles's circular ruminations rounded the corner of 'maybe it's all for the best'. “Let get breakfast going.”

“Good idea,” Giles agreed, then, brightening even more, as if struck by a thought, “We could go over to my place, spend a bit of the morning together just the two of us, before... well, I suppose I could drive you to school, give us even more time. I have missed you something terrible, you know.”

Now it was Willow's turn to look uncomfortable and apologetic. “Well... uh... we could do that, except Buffy's going to be here in just a few minutes for the meeting, so...”

“Meeting?” Giles was beyond shocked, almost flabbergasted. “Wh—what meeting?”

Willow hoped she didn't look as green around the gills as she felt. “The Slayerettes meeting?” She half apologized. “They one we've been having every morning at 7:30 since you went into the hospital.”

“Oh,” Giles said, and for a moment, had nothing else to say. “Well,” he said finally, getting to his feet and offering Willow his hand, “I guess we'd best get to it then.”

Willow gave him a lopsided smile and, rising, took his hand.

 


	3. Blinders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: I'm looking into that, but, uh, my investigation is somewhat... hampered by our life in the theater.  
> Buffy: Uh, priority check, Giles? Talent show, murder.  
> ~BtVS 1.9 "The Puppet Show"

**No! No! No! No! This cannot be happening!** _Oh, chill out. No wonder you had a not-a-heart attack._ Willow cleared her throat uncomfortably. Giles smiled tightly at the assemblage of very uneasy young women gathered around the breakfast table. He could feel the sweat beading his brow as the shouting inside his head continued. 

**Chill out? Chill out!?! Do you even understand what's happening here!!!** _Do you? Because to me it sounds like you have bigger fish to fry than whether I'm validating your feelings enough or not! For Hell's sake, say something! Talk her out of it. Do that cool I'm-so-rational thing you do._

But it was Willow who responded to Buffy first. “Tell the Council? Everything? We can't do that. Buffy why would we do that?”

“Yeah,” Sheila piped in. “What's going to happen to us if he's in jail or in England or something? Or don't you give a crap?”

“Mum... excuse me? Hello?” Buffy retorted, her mock bewilderment hard edged with bitterness and irony. “Am I the only person in this room who remembers that there's a murderer on the loose? Not to mention I still need a Watcher—a real one, I mean. Remember: World still in peril; Master still looking to rise... Am I ringing any bells? Does anyone else have a suggestion for what to do about any of that?”

Suddenly all three girls were shouting at once. Names of powers and authorities were invoked, from the late Mr. Merrick and the Council to the State of California and Almighty God; a sure sing that rationality has been exhausted and abandoned in any argument. Sheila and Buffy were on their feet now, each trying to bore holes in the other with her eyes from opposite sides of the table. One minute Willow was appealing for peace in the name of friendship; the next she was joining in the vicious shouting once again.

“All I'm asking,” Buffy thundered, finally out shouting the others, “Is does anyone have the slightest idea how to handle this situation *without* helping a murderer escape or risking the end of the world! Cause if so; hey, I'm all ears! But so far, all I'm hearing from any of you is 'what about me!' Well I'm sorry, but as The Slayer, I can't afford to just think about myself!"

“Alright!” Giles heard himself saying before he'd quite realized he intended to speak. “That's it! You may not be able to respect me as your Watcher; I can understand that. But before you get quite so far up on your high horse about Truth, Justice, and the American Way; I think someone ought to remind you who it is that's been standing shoulder to shoulder with you these last few weeks and facing the forces of evil, not because they were chosen or destined too, but for no better or worse reason than because someone has to! Say what you like about me; but I'll be damned if I'll let you sit here and call these young women *selfish* for expecting you to take their needs and wishes into account!”

Their was a hiss of indrawn breath. Buffy closed her mouth and lowered her eyes. The silence that suddenly fell between them all was tense, oppressive. It was hard to tell if The Slayer felt chastened or merely too angry or frustrated to continue the exchange. “It's getting late,” she mumbled at length, without making eye contact with anyone. “I'd better get to school.”

“Wait,” Willow pleaded, getting to her feet along with Buffy, “Don't you want a—” but Buffy was out the door in a huffy swish of pleated plaid before she could hear Willow wiltingly conclude, “—ride?”

“This blows,” Sheila grumbled. Giles bit down on his impulse to snarl at her for stating the obvious, knowing he had even less right to be cross with her than Buffy had. He was just in a foul mood for the very reason that she had just stated; to wit, the fact that the circumstances of all of their lives were becoming increasingly insufferable. That and the fact that he had never liked people who weren't all that smart all that well.

“It'll be okay,” Willow cooed worriedly, her eyes practically begging for the reassuring sound of agreement. “I think, maybe Buffy just needs some time? To, to calm down and then, then she'll see that—”

“I think maybe she needs her ass kicked.” Sheila stated flatly.

“By who?” Willow half whined, half snapped. “The National Guard? Giles what are we gonna do?”

“I don't know,” he admitted. “But we can't let the Council find out that I'm still having my... erm.... my little demon... problem. They'll have me on the next flight to London if they have to bang me over the head and toss me in a sack.”

“That's not very encouraging,” Willow grumbled with just a hint of an actual, infantile pout.

 _Tell her not to worry. I got this._ **What? How's that exactly?** _Just trust me._ **Ha! Never happen.** _Just say it anyway. Say something at least. She's gonna cry again. Even I don't think I can take that._

 **You're just a big softy.** Giles thought dryly. But out loud he said, “Look, just—don't worry about it. I'll talk to her.”

Willow gave him a very specific and unmistakable skeptical look. “You'll 'talk' to her?” she said. Now both girls were looking at him dubiously.

“I'll do my very best,” he replied, frost crackling in his voice as he swallowed the answer he wanted to give which was that he though he could do a better job of just talking to Buffy than Willow had done last night. _So I wasn't the only one who noticed that, huh?_ After all, he'd done alright this morning hadn't he?

It took a little more feather smoothing and a promise to do the washing up to get the girls into Sheila's new Mini Van and off to Fondren High School. Not that their feathers were really all that smooth by the time they left. He'd best do something before the school day ended. On the Buffy front at least.

 **We can't have another new Watcher sent here.** Rupert reiterated gravely over a sink full of warm suds. **Certainly not with that maniac Rosenberg on the loose.** The demon didn't verbalize anything about the irony that could be found in that statement, but Giles would have sworn he could hear the thought anyway. _Uh, Paranoid much?_ **Oh, no. Don't start talking like them. That's just too disturbing.** _Sorry._

 _Look let's just... stay on task why don't we._ The demon agreed. _I've looked at this from every which angle and the truth is there are a dozen different ways to deal with almost all of this—Buffy's anger, the Council's oversight, Gwendolyn's crimes, Willow and Sheila's pregnancies. None of that would amount to a truly insurmountable immediate problem if it weren't for one single common denominator tying all of it into one huge, unsolvable knot._

Agreement persisted between them. With one mind, they named the thing at the forefront of all of their many problems: _ **Ira Rosenberg.**_

 


	4. Who's Whose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WILLOW:... There's something between us. It wasn't something I was looking for. It's just powerful. ...  
> BUFFY: Well, there you go, I mean, you know, you have to - you have to follow your heart, Will. And that's what's important, Will....  
> WILLOW: Are you freaked?  
> BUFFY: What? No, Will. No. No, absolutely no to that question.  
> ~BtVS 4.19 "New Moon Rising"

Buffy barely gave a thought to where she was walking; and even then, it was really only the don't-step-in-front-of/in-that kind of thought. She didn't even walk in the direction of her new school. She just walked. When she got tired of walking, she ran, then walked some more. By the time she felt less-mad enough to take a good look around, she was standing near the front gate of Tender Mercies Cemetery, clear on the other side of Sunset Ridge.

Buffy shrugged to herself and pushed open the huge, rusted gate. Why not, she thought. Tender Mercies was in a practically deserted part of town with nothing but abandoned warehouses and rundown factories. Buffy decided to bust open a few crypts and see if that lead to a chance to bust some heads. There was no one to stop her.

Unfortunately, there was also no one in any of the crypts. No one but the simply and seriously dead. Not a vampire one. Nor a demon. But at least breaking chains and bashing in iron, stone, and hardwood doors gave Buffy a chance to pound some of her frustrations out. And afterward, she felt better... for the two seconds it took her to realize that she had not solved a single one of her many, very real problems.

That and the fact that, no matter how much she hated it, she had better get to school while the damage was still limited to missing first period. And after all, what excuse could she make, even to herself, for not going? Just because she was upset? Because her life sucked? Willow was going to school today, and who's life could suck more than that?

Getting pregnant and getting kicked out of the house like Shiela was one thing. At least Buffy could imagine that, not that she really thought her parents would go that far. But to be in Willow's shoes, to be *secretly* pregnant by her secret seducer, who had her *convinced* that they were soul mates, that she could never risk loosing him by telling the truth.... What must it be like, living in fear of being found out, day after day, knowing that sooner or later, discovery was inevitable?

If she had planned to actually do something about any of it, the murder, the sex, her Watcherlessness; at least that would be a reason to ditch school. But it didn't really make any sense to ditch just to do absolutely nothing about anything. But whenever she even thought about the possibility of going to the police, or the Council, or anyone else; her heart pulled her mind back to one single, very important reason not to. At least, not right away. And that reason answered to the name of Willow.

In truth, Buffy's heart went out to Willow. The more so, the longer she knew her. But there was more to it than pity. Well, there was gratitude for one thing. But then again, Sheila had been helping Buffy hold the line against the forces of darkness just as fiercely as Willow had. And yet, not that she didn't think about what Sheila needed; But of the two, Buffy always thought of Willow first.

But then, Buffy tried to reason with herself, it wasn't like there weren't reasons for that. Sheila was a great partner to have watching your back in a simple brawl; but Willow could do things to help in the fight against the more sophisticated forces of evil that Buffy couldn't possibly do for herself. Like the computer thing, and the money stuff, and... well... she was just... Willow. So smart, so nice, so easy to have a conversation not-about-bashing-skulls with, and she was just, well... such a good friend.

'With Benefits', an internal voice snarked at Buffy, but she ignored the thought. What had happened between the two of them (or more accurately, between the *five* of them) last night had had absolutely noting to do with the way Buffy felt about Willow. That had just been a demon, playing with them all like dolls. It had made them kiss and touch each other just the same as it had made them both want to be with Giles.

That sounded reasonable enough, but somehow, Buffy wasn't convinced. Maybe because, if she was really being honest, it was pretty hard to square with the facts. After all, Sheila had shrugged off a fairly bold advance from Willow in the same casual, no-hard-feelings spirit you might use to turn down a saved seat or an offered umbrella. And Gruesome Gwendolyn had come as close to not touching any of the girls at all as was humanly possible under the circumstances.

Of the four women in Giles' bedroom last night, every single one had had a go at the one (objectively far from spectacular looking) man available. But only two had ended up making with the girl on girl action. And those two were Willow and Buffy. Buffy who now couldn't stop thinking about not only the seriously sexual stuff they'd done and hadn't done and could still do; but also the sweet, passionate, soul deep kisses they'd share. Willow who had blushed and smiled nervously when Buffy's fingers had brushed hers and their eyes had met over a plate of eggs not two hours ago.

'Great' Buffy thought, kicking over a small random headstone just for the pure hell of it; then feeling guilty when she saw that it was the marker of a child. It was a little girl who should be the same age as Buffy's parents, except that she'd been dead several times longer than she had been alive. That was the crappy thing about Slayer powers. The reason why Buffy didn't have the right to lose her temper and act rashly. She was the best in the world at breaking things, but no better than anyone else at putting them back together.

Which was, she now realized, sort of not unrelated to the way she was felling about last night. It was bad enough knowing that they had all boned the same guy and that Willow was still 'in love' with him, or thought she was. That made it hard for the three girls to sick together, but their rock solid friendship, their trust and reliance on each other, made a way. But that was exactly because they were three best friends, equally close, like the three legs of a stool. Buffy would never have willingly done anything to throw that dynamic out of balance.

But having Rupert back in the picture, having to see each other... doing it with the guy live and in color, having to deal with the three very different relationships they all saw themselves having with him from here forward, not to mention the babies that were about to pop onto the scene... still wasn't as confusing as what had happened between Buffy and Willow last night.

Growing up in the sprawling sorta-burbs-sorta-urbs of middle class residential LA, in the land of nuclear families and tiny fenced back yards, though it had never been talked about in so many words, least of all by her parents, Buffy had formed a very definite impression of how human sexuality worked. Most people were straight. Some people were gay. Not that there was anything wrong with that. That was just how it was.

And then there were married men who secretly hung out in gay bars and told there wives they were working late. And drunk bimbos who made out with each other in bars then left (separately or together) with the first man to flash a wad of cash their way. Collectively these people called themselves 'bisexuals'. But mostly they were just kidding themselves. Or someone else.

At best they were the kind of people who lived down town, threw wild parties, did drugs, and just didn't care what anybody thought. Or maybe cared a little too much. Being gay was part of who you were, like being Black. 'Swinging both ways' was a questionable life choice, bordering on bad behavior. It was making light of something serious. Like wearing black-face.

But a girl who'd always liked guys, whose heart still fluttered at the thought of her very first kiss with a boy behind the middle school gym, and who, nevertheless, in the heat of sexual passion, in the very midst of being turned on by and satisfied by a man, felt an uncontrollable urge to grind herself to orgasm against one, singular, particular girl the very thought of whom was making her heart or stomach or something flutter right now? Buffy didn't have a word for that. And even if she could think of one it would be hard to square it with the almost sisterly affection she felt for Willow, bedroom adventures not withstanding.

Worse still, it piled complication on top of complexity in her dubious working relationship with her supposed Watcher. It wasn't enough he had to bone her and her two best friends along with half the women in town? It wasn't enough that children had to be born into this bizarre little tribe? She had to have the same guy who was the eye of that shit-storm as a romantic rival for the love of a girl she could neither stifle her naughty thoughts about nor quit thinking of as her Best Friend with definite capital letters? And where exactly did any of that leave either of them with Shiela?

Buffy couldn't think. Her heart was pounding, and her confusion was welling up inside her again, feeling like panic but threatening to come out as rage. She certainly couldn't go to school like this, Buffy decided firmly. She couldn't face dealing with people, pretending to be this happy, normal little schoolgirl person with all of this emotion churning inside her. It might not even be safe. For her or anyone around her.

'Oh yeah' that same sarcastic inner voice excoriated Buffy again, 'when you put it that way, that's it makes perfect sense. The burden of knowing that your letting a murderer go free so you can cover up your soap-opera-meets-after-school-special sex life is totally an excuse to ditch school and move one day closer to breaking your mom's heart and re-ruining her life.'

It was harsh, even Buffy knew that, the way she was beating herself up. Probably also fair, but that was beside the point. If she wasn't going to school, Buffy needed something else to do with her day besides wallowing. She needed someone else to beat up.


	5. Something Wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: Spontaneous human combustion is, is rare, and, and scientifically unexplainable, but there have been cases for hundreds of years. Usually all that's left is a pile of ashes.  
> Willow: That's all that would have been left if it hadn't been for Buffy.  
> ~BtVS 1.3 "Witch"

This time they wouldn't be late. Willow might not have been sure of anything else in her life, but that much she knew she could handle. She had to. One more missed class, and there really would be people from the school knocking on her parents' door to have a chat about straightening out her behavior. There'd be conferences. Recommendations. Followups. Willow's life could not withstand that kind of scrutiny right now. Ergo, she had to get to school on time, and she would.

At first it had seemed like they would be cutting it close, but then they had made good time at every possible opportunity. The lights were with them. There was no train to wait for where the tracks crossed the highway just outside the Fondren City Limits. It was as if the universe had suddenly decided to be in Willow's corner for once. They pulled into the student parking lot along side Fondren High at 7:38 exactly. It was a good seven minutes before the first bell, twenty-two minutes until the tardy bell. Nothing could stop them now as long as...

“Whoa!” Sheila half exclaimed in cheerful, interested surprise. “Don't tell me this place caught on fire too! Buffy doesn't even go here.”

… nothing weird happened.

“Yeah,” Willow murmured distractedly as she worriedly observed the presence of two fire trucks, an ambulance and one police car positioned around the main building like a circle of wagons around a party of settlers who were under attack. Willow shook herself. There was no reason this had to interrupt the first day of her new perfect attendance streak. No reason it had to concern her at all.

“Come on,” Willow said, gripping Sheila lightly by the forearm. Sheila grinned cruelly, like something unpleasant was funny, but she didn't protest. The two girls grabbed their backpacks and circled wide to get around the action and to the side entrance, before they were late for class.

As they circled, they tried to stay out of the way and see what was going on at the same time. At least Willow did. But when she turned at the feeling of Sheila no longer breathing down her neck, she saw the other girl casually stroll up to the perimeter of yellow caution tape and duck under. Willow didn't hear the exchange between Sheila and the fireman who appeared to be in charge. But the overall impression was one of vague hostility. Despite that, Sheila sauntered right in through the front door, turning on the way to get a good look at the person being loaded into the ambulance.

“She was burned real bad,” Sheila hissed in Willow's ear five minutes later as they sat in the back row of Mr. Miller's homeroom class, still waiting for the second bell. “Like somebody poured gas all over her or something. I heard the ambulance guys talking about it. They think she might actually bite it!” She might have been talking about a bug or a mouse she'd found dead on the floor; except that apparently, dead cheerleaders were even cooler to look at and poke with the proverbial stick, just to see if they were still twitching.

Willow felt almost obligated to say something to Sheila, to let her know she was out of line. But before she could even begin to formulate a plan for doing that without causing serious hurt to Sheila's feelings and her own face; mercifully, Mr. Miller came in, looking so official and serious that people took their seats and turned to face him, the last five minutes to the second bell be damned. People got quiet. For real quiet. Even Sheila.

“As some of you may have heard,” Mr. Miller explained in that firm, gentle way he had when something especially scary was going on, “there was an accident this morning in the Girl's gymnasium during cheerleader tryouts. Amber Grove, whom many of you may have known from Sunnydale High, sustained serious burns. Apparently, gas leaked from a broken valve in the boiler room beneath the gym. It was then ignited by sparks from a faulty electrical wire, causing flames to shoot up through the floor and engulf Amber.”

Hear Mr. Millers tone because even more somber, his steady gaze deeply, indefinably sad. “Amber was rushed to Del Bacco County Medical center to be stabilized for a air lift to the Level One Burn Center in San Diego.”

Willow wanted desperately for that to be all Mr. Miller had to say, to be told that further updates could be expected once Amber reached San Diego, where brilliant doctors were sure to fix her good as new. A glance around the room told her that was what everyone wanted. Well, everyone but the handful of people who were already bored, or ghoulishly excited. And Sheila? It was hard to tell. She looked a little green around the gills, but that might have only been morning sickness.

Regardless, nothing in Mr. Miller's expression supported anyone's hopes that Amber might still be among the living. Inevitably, the pause in his announcement came to an end. “Unfortunately, she didn't make it to San Diego. Her burns were just too severe. And given the loss many of us are feeling and the safety concerns this raises with regard to the buildings on campus, a decision has been made to cancel school today and tomorrow in order to allow a full state safety inspection of all buildings.”

Willow blinked as Mr. Miller's words rounded that last sharp turn and slammed her into a brick wall. Everywhere around her was the muted hum of teenagers guiltily trying not to sound relieved and excited that the life of a classmate had bought them two free days off from school. Sheila didn't even try. “Score,” she said quietly but with relish. “Wanna go get some spray paint and do crosses on the doors of the big mausoleums where the vamps like to hang out?”

Willow just sighed and started gathering up her books. It was surprising how many of the skills and interests Sheila had developed as a profligate hooligan easily transferred over to her new life as a Slayerette. “Oh come on,” Sheila insisted as they made their hurried way to the parking lot, one with the stampede. “You don't even have to do anything; just be my lookout. We can make it like our fifth grade reunion or something.”

“Yeah,” Willow scoffed. “I was grounded for a month after that. Remember? If my parents find out we're hanging together again, I'll have to catch a cargo ship to Asia.”

“Relax,” Sheila insisted as they reached her new van. “They never pay attention to anything else you do unless you shove it right under their nose. Why would this be any different?” Sheila had a point there. And at least she got in to the passenger seat without argument this time, in deference to Willow's 'stupid' concern about the tiny fact that she didn't have a license.

Willow wanted to go along for the sake of friendship, really she did. She thought it was the correct thing to do, both morally and socially. It might even represent the tiniest bit of actual help to Buffy in the fight against evil. But instead she said, apologetically, “Rain check?”

Sheila gave her a look, bulldog pout and all. Then she sort of smiled. “Just can't wait to get your paws on him again huh?”

“What?” Willow was both stunned and perplexed. Where had that come from? From Sheila's dysfunctional upbringing? Her fifteen-year-old immaturity? Then again, to be fair, that was what the one time they'd all been in the same room had been like.

“Oh come on,” Sheila pressed as Willow pulled the vehicle out into the flow of traffic and headed back in the general direction of Sunnydale. “What are you gonna do? Go hang out in your empty house alone and do homework?”

“No, of course not, but—“Willow was flustered, not sure what was about to come out of her mouth until she said it. “We should be … trying to find out what happened to Amber so Buffy can put a stop to it.” Okay, yeah. That sounded surprisingly sensible. Way better than tagging crypts with spray paint.

“Seriously, Chica,” Sheila pressed with sincerity, affection and authority, all of which still sounded strange coming from her, “you need to spend some time with him, one on one. Doesn't matter if you do spend it doing your friggin homework or looking for the secret demon conspiracy behind an old building catching on fire. You couldn't see how freaked out he was at breakfast? It's not like I'm a damned genius like you two, but I'm not blind.”

Was there a slight edge to Sheila's voice when she said that? Was she hurt? Angry? If so, she was working hard to hide it. Willow decided to let it lie. Maybe she could use some one on one time with Giles, just to talk and hold each other and feel close again.

But off the cuff as it had been, once she had given voice to the notion of a supernatural menace behind Amber's death, Willow found the idea surprisingly hard to shake.

 


	6. Worse Than the Disease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: You put these people in danger. The people I care about.  
> Ethan: If you cared so much about them, why didn't *you* leave town?  
> ~BtVS 2.8 "The Dark Age"

The banging on the door grew louder. “Alright! Alright!” Rupert bellowed, pressing both hands against his pounding skull as if to keep it from flying apart from internal pressure. “Keep your bloody shirt on,” he muttered much lower as he picked himself up from the sofa he'd evidently either lain or fallen upon at some point in the dim yet recent past.

According to the nearest available timepiece, it was half-past noon. The nearly empty bottle of Scotch sitting on the end table, notably unaccompanied by any glasses, was all the explanation he could find as to where the morning had gone. _Lucky you. I remember every dull maudlin minute of it._

Ignoring the unwelcome voice in his head, making a point, in fact, of not answering it, Rupert shuffled towards the door, not daring to take either foot off the floor long enough to take a normal step. Quite reasonably afraid that he might fall. He was in that superbly unenviable condition of being both intoxicated and hungover at one and the same time. And yet, his thoughts tormented him far more than his physical discomforts.

He tried to wonder who on earth that could be at his door, but within reason, he already knew. The girls were all in school, besides which, they probably would have just walked in. The Council could not have convened a meeting this quickly, let alone sent another Watcher. And the police were unlikely to return for another round of questioning until the Coroner had finished dissecting the real Lydia Chalmers.

As he reached his front door and stood resting his head in his hands a moment, dreading the blinding sunlight outside as deeply as any vampire might, Rupert Giles was unpleasantly certain that his insistent visitor could be none other than Ira Rosenberg. Feeling the demon smirking at him, or at some joke of it's own, unable to take the incessant knocking a moment longer, Giles groaned and opened the door.

But his curses and complaints froze in his throat. The demons silent smirk matured into a full-bodied laugh of evil merriment. There, back lit by the blinding sun, wisps of blazing hair floating around her indistinct face, stood Willow Rosenberg. Rupert reached out to hold her and nearly fell over, weeping with relief, Burying his face in the softness of her hair as she helped him navigate his unsteady way back to his distant sofa.

So happy was he that she and not her hateful father had been standing at his door, that it took him several minutes to register the fact that Willow seemed worried, agitated, and frankly displeased at him. _Golly, you think?_

“I'm sorry, my dear,” he finally managed in what he hoped was a soothing tone, stroking (or perhaps pawing clumsily at) her hair. “I really didn't mean to have quite so much to drink, but you see... I wasn't really expecting...”

Willow pushed him away and scooted down to the other end of the couch, where she sat, arms folded before her chest, looking stern. When he tried to speak again, she cut him off with a sharp little sound of reproach and the waggle of one seriously upstretchered index finger. “Shoosh!” she insisted, “Not another word. I'm not going to listen to your drunken attempts to explain where you were when I came back this morning. You are gonna lie right down on this sofa, mister, and … and sleep it off!”

“But...” he started, feeling both confused and rankled. Willow tried to cut him off again, but he persisted. “Came back this morning? How could you've? How are you—why aren't you in school even now? And besides I've been here the whole time.... From what I can tell.”

“Oh really?” Willow was really peeved now, even at his drunkest, Giles could certainly see that. “Then when slash why exactly did you change clothes? And why is there tree pollen all over your jacket?”

That pulled Rupert up short. For the first time, he took careful note of what he was actually wearing. It was not the tasteful tweed ensemble (complete with vest, tie, and pocket square) that he'd donned this morning before breakfast.

Those clothes had been chosen deliberately to convey dignity and to arouse feelings of familiarity and trust. In other words, they had been chosen for seeing Willow and for letting her see him as (in her experience anyway) he had always been. They were clothes meant to say 'I am in fact the man with whom you fell in love, whatever else I may have seemed to be since.'

Now he was wearing his snuggest, sexiest pair of dark jeans and his vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt. Clothes that said, 'show me to the bar and keep the girls coming.' If they had been his comfortable, faded jeans, at least he could have argued that he'd only changed out of his good threads before proceeding to wallow around the house pitying himself and becoming pitifully drunk. But even then, he'd have had a hard time explaining the jacket.

His black leather jacket, which he had no memory of wearing since his last, ill-fated, excursion to the Fish Tank, was slung over one arm of the couch. It was covered with a thin patina of almost iridescent yellow-green. The same shade than now lay thinly but pervasively over every outdoor surface in Sunnydale. Rupert recalled Ira having cleaned the same pollen off of his windscreen the night before, while he'd sat there thinking that it was a new development since he'd gone into hospital, evidence of the early, Californian Spring.

The pollen on the jacket was streaked and smudged away in certain place, particularly around the cuffs, collar, and zipper. Just as if he had worn it outside for a period of time, walked inside, and taken it off before sitting down on the couch to get stupefied. Willow thought so too, and said as much. Desperate, seeking aid from any quarter, Giles tried to enquirer of the incubus directly, but he got only laughter in return.

Finally, he was forced to admit the truth. “Your right, Willow.”

“I am?” She seemed both surprised and disappointed.

“To a point,” he went on carefully enunciating each word least there be any slurring, “I will grant, the... erm... the *physical* evidence certainly suggests that I've been out somewhere this morning. The trouble is, I have no memory of it.” _Oh believe me_ , the demon finally interjected, _that is not the trouble. Remembering where you've been would be much worse!_

 


	7. The Enemy of My Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: Who are you?  
> Angel: Let's just say... I'm a friend.  
> Buffy: Yeah, well, maybe I don't want a friend.  
> Angel: I didn't say I was yours.  
> ~BtVS 1.1 "Welcome to the Hellmouth"

Buffy wasn't sure if she heard a step behind her or just felt the presence. It was a vampire. No question about that. She couldn't always tell, not when there were a million other things going on around her that required her attention. But one on one? In an empty, quiet place like this abandoned factory on the edge of town? No sweat.

It was no sweat knowing it was behind her either. One vampire she could deal with. One vampire she could kill. A slow smile spread across Buffy's face as she slid a stake from her sleeve into her hand and turned to face her latest foe.

It was about time, Buffy thought. She'd been beginning to think the forces of darkness weren't even trying today, that she'd have to go home frustrated. But no. When she saw the tall dark figure who stood halfway across the shadowy, cavernous room, the Slayer had to agree Evil Central was pulling out the stops after all. This was going to be an actual workout.

Buffy sighed theatrically and mock complained, “Golly, how far does a girl have to go in this town to have a little time to herself? I mean, I ask you... if you can't be alone in an abandoned warehouse—”

“You shouldn't be here,” Angelus cut her off sharply, sidestepping a beam of direct sunlight coming through a high window as he continued to move slowly in her direction. “It's not safe,” he added more softly, doing a remarkably convincing job of sounding peeved-only-because-I'm-concerned.

Buffy was not convince. “Oh really?” she scoffed mildly. “Maybe you're the one who shouldn't be here then.”

Angelus looked a strange mixture of grave and bored. As tough her situation were more dire than she could possible know but he was too tired of both life and death to care more than was absolutely necessary. But when she added, maybe a tad more sharply than she'd intended, “I know how to handle myself!” he gave her a long-suffering look that said he hoped so, but really doubted it.

Whatever his scam was, he was sure laying it on thick... in an annoyingly subtle and understated sort of way that looked and felt way too much like straightforwardness. Okay, Buffy thought, now I'm really losing it. Am I actually standing here wondering if a *vampire* who so far has introduced himself only as 'A Friend' is on the up and up?

Of course it was a scam, it had to be. What other possibility could there be?

“Look,” Angelus said sharply, taking a few bravely quick steps in Buffy's direction, but keeping his eye on the stake in her hand, “We don't have time for this. They're coming.”

“Who?” Buffy challenged, adopting a fighter's stance, her stake at the ready, “Your friends?”

“No,” the vampire tossed off with the textbook cool-yet-mysterious-somber bravado of a stock Byronic hero. “*Our* enemies.” If that wasn't the truth he should win an Oscar, or at least a Daytime Emmy.

So maybe there was a third possibility after all, besides a long con or a 'good' vampire. Good old fashioned American self interest. This guy was crossways with The Master and wanted to even the sides up a little by palling up to a Slayer. She could roll with that, Buffy decided. To a point. Not that she was going to forget to stake this animal before everything was said and done, but if he wanted to help her kill a few other vampires first, that was a good. Wasn't it?

“Alright 'Friend'” Buffy said finally relaxing her stance but keeping her stake at the ready. “So we need to get out of here. Thanks for the tip. I can always walk out the front door and enjoy the beautiful sunshine. What's your plan?”

Whatever the original answer to that was going to be, Buffy never heard it. Suddenly, the factory echoed with the noise of a large number of vampires approaching from more than one direction. More than one and most definitely including the way Buffy had come in.

Buffy swallowed a curse, more at her own carelessness than anything else. There were other rooms and corridors between here and the front door. A dozen doors she hadn't bothered to open in her far from methodical search for vampires to slay. Worse, after a split second of distraction, she turned to find Angelus practically at her side. He could have probably killed her in that split second if that had been his goal. Sloppy. Very sloppy, Buffy chided herself, as in stupid.

“Come on,” Angelus hissed, so close to her ear now that if he had been human she might have felt his warm breath. “This way!”

Buffy didn't hesitate. She made a snap decision. The kind that was probably going to get her killed one day, but certainly not one day sooner than staying where she was would have. She followed Angelus. It was enough that she believed that, at that moment, he was helping her avoid the Master's Legions, not helping them lead her directly into their trap.

The rest of it, what he really wanted from her and why he was willing to save a Slayer's life to get it.... That would just have to wait until she had more time to figure things out. Buffy figured not being dead would probably help with that.


	8. Inside Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xander: So, we have no idea what caused this. That's a comfort.  
> Giles: But that's the thrill of living on the Hellmouth! There's a veritable cornucopia of, of fiends and devils and, and ghouls to engage. *Pardon me for  
> finding the glass half full.*

Tap tap tap went the keys. Willow stared at the screen the way a pilot stares at his instrument panel, and for pretty much the same reason. She was almost there. Just one more simple firewall to disable that shouldn't have been tricky at all. It was being sorta tricky.

She tried to ignore Giles who was sitting at her shoulder, i.e. breathing down her neck. He was making these sort of nervous almost-sounds, like he was perpetually on the verge of muttering something, of seeking reassurance, or maybe asking a question. Not that he would have known what to ask.

Giles might have known everything about a lot of things, but they were in Willow's world now. Giles was out of his depth. That or being drunk seemed to be making him uncomfortably clingy. Oh well, at least they weren't having sex. Willow had a feeling that uncontrollable sex with a weepy, clingy, sweaty, stumbling, fumbling drunk would not have been an amazing amount of fun.

Finally, when she was just about to turn around and tell him to find something, anything else to do; Willow punched through the last remaining barrier and the files opened up to her. She was in. There was an undeniable (and undeniably naughty) thrill. All of the secrets of the County Coroner's office were hers for the taking. She was that good.

There was already a file for Amber Grove in the system, but no autopsy report in the file yet. Oh, but... oh no! (oh yes) There were pictures. Judging from the curses he uttered. Giles saw exactly what she did. Willow turned, and the look in his eyes was confirmation enough.

Amber’s feet were not burned. Not even a little bit. She still had the glossy pink polish on her toes. Her torso was burned much worse than her head, and her arms even worse than that. Her hair was brittle and filthy but still more attached to her scalp than not.

Her hands were almost gone, but the flesh that was left was pealed backward in exactly the same way on both sides. Near the fingertips especially, little shriveled bits of flesh and even skin flopped fee, looking no more than medium well. And yet, the bones beneath seemed to have been reduced to ashes.

Like her hands had burned from the inside.

“Gas leak my ass,” Giles scoffed at the official story. Willow might have winced a little at his phrasing, but she couldn't fault his conclusion.

“Even if she was standing on her hands...” she acknowledged.

“...her head should be burned at least as bad as her midsection,” Giles agreed. “This fire didn't come up from beneath her it... shot out of her hands?” Giles's brow furrow and for a moment he seemed his sweet old British self again. “That doesn't sound like any demon I can think of.”

“No,” Willow had to agree, “It doesn't.” She felt foolish for what she was about to say, but it was true, so she said it anyway. “It sounds more like something out of Marvel Comics.”

A light of realization went off in Giles eyes and he sat up a bit straighter. The booze finally seemed to be wearing off. “Or perhaps from the mind of someone who reads too many comics. As, for example, and American teenager who has stumbled upon one of the Hellmouth's many sources of unnatural power.” After a second of quiet reflection he added, “Perhaps even Amber herself.”

“Oh!” Willow agreed, the excitement of speculation verging on discovery invigorating her own tone. “Maybe, maybe she like did a spell or... or something to make herself a Super Hero, like, like the Human Torch? And, and then she couldn’t control it and—” Willow crashed hard against reality. “And now she's dead,” she mumbled guiltily, eyes downcast.

“Well, let's hope so,” Giles mumbled, sounding a bit distracted again. At the look Willow gave him, he hastened to explain. “I meant, of course, lets hope that this... immolation was in fact self-inflected and that there isn't still someone out there roasting young girls from the inside.”

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “Even just thinking... I mean who could possibly do something like that? And even just the thought that it might be a who and not a what.... Sort of make me long for a good old fashioned vampire to deal with.”

Giles frowned at that, and then smiled a little. He was seeming more like himself. Wasn't he? As not okay as his blackout drinking was, it was only that, wasn't it? And now that he was sobering up, everything was fine again, or as fine as it ever was. It didn't have to be such a big thing, like he had a problem or something. It was just... a bad habit. The wrong way of coping with stress. A habit he could certainly break. After all, Giles was too smart to let himself get too carried away with something like that, no matter how bad things got. Wasn't he?

Mercifully, Willow's contemplation of that very unsettling question was cut short. Buffy slammed the front door open and marched in without so much as a knock. “Make yourself at home,” Giles volunteered snidely, still not quite sober enough to resist.

Buffy ignored him and launched right into what she had clearly come over to talk about, “Why didn't we have sex this morning?”


	9. The Wrong Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: It's bad, isn't it.  
> Giles: It's devastating. He's turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. Course, you'll have to kill him.  
> Buffy: Giles, I'm serious.  
> Giles: So am I. Except for the part about killing him. Testosterone is a great equalizer. It turns all men into morons. He will, however, get over it.  
> ~BtVS 1.6 "The Pack"

“Well?” Buffy demanded when Giles gave no immediate answer to her appalling question. He snuck a quick look at Willow's face and found she looked just as horrified as he felt. He had to say something, if for no other reason than to make sure she didn't have to.

“Look, Buffy, I...” but there wasn't a lot he could say in present company that wouldn't cause Willow pain or cause Buffy to rip his arms off. _Oh, give it a try you silver-tonged devil. I have faith in you._ “I'm not sure this... subject is what we need to be focusing on in... in light of recent events. You, you see there—there's been an incident, and...”

“No,” Buffy cut him off sharply. “This is important. Last night, we couldn't control ourselves. Not... any of us.”

Strangely, Giles could have sworn that he saw a meaningful look pass between Willow and Buffy, but what it could possibly have meant... _Are you sure you're a genius?_ He'd have liked to have disputed the demon's obvious implication, but Willow colored deeply and looked down at her hands in her lap. **Less and less every day** , he admitted.

“And yet,” Buffy continued stridently, as if trying to convince them of facts that they had all witnessed and taken part in, “this morning it's like.... Like nothing ever happened. Like we're barely even—” Buffy stopped short and took a half second to recover, “ Like we're not even attracted to each other. Which we normally aren't, obviously. Because, because hey, why would we? Be. I mean, it's just a demon thing, otherwise, no way right? But clearly, the library is not the major factor we all once believed it to be. So, if the demon thing worked on all of us here last night, why not this morning? Why not right now?”

At that last question Rupert could not quite deny to himself that a tiny filament of desire wove it's way through the tapestry of his horror, regret, and chagrin. Willow fixed her eyes on the computer and began typing away again, half swallowing a small sound of distress. Dear Lord, what exactly had these two done last night?

Granted he'd had his hands full, but it was hard to believe he hadn't noticed the girl he loved having sex with his very attractive Slayer while he lay in the same bed no more than a foot away. _They were never that far away,_ the demon pointed out, amused, _not nearly. The four of them were just too much for you, that's all._ **I am but a mere man,** Giles rejoined dryly. Aloud, to Buffy, who was now coloring a bit herself and none too happy about it, he made what he hoped was a sufficient response to the question as it had been intended, unfortunate phrasing not withstanding.

“I agree, this is a question worth asking,” he admitted carefully. “I wish I could explain, but all I'm getting from my... constant companion are cryptic hints and cruel laughter. This... these... episodes occurring at a distance from the Hellmouth... nothing quite like this ever happened *before* my....” Now it was his turn to blush with shame “... hospilalization. That's really all I know.

“But,” Giles hastened to add, just as Buffy was opening her mouth to speak, “I'm afraid there is a new supernatural menace to be dealt with at the moment. Something that has the power to burn people from the inside out.” Buffy sucked in her breath shocked, and for the moment, silenced. “Willow's school was closed because of a death there this morning. We were just going through the, the poor girl's autopsy photos. Trying to... to... well at any rate, we could use your help.”

With a roll of her eyes and an exaggerated sigh, Buffy took her hands from her hips and sauntered over. She looked at the gory photo's for a tenth of a second, wrinkled up her face in disgust and turned away. But even as she did, her eyes registered less disgust than profound sorrow and righteous anger. “Alright,” she said, addressing Willow as well, “What do we know so far and what do we need me to go figure out?”

After that, the conversation got productive. They dug into facts and tried to match them to possibilities, compiling a list of demons and phenomena to suspect, then testing and marking off each successive hypothesis. “I don't supposed anyone at your school happened to spontaneously burst into song this morning?” Giles asked Willow at one point; keeping a finger on the relevant lines in one of several books open all around him on the couch as he looked up to gauge her reaction. At the look she gave him, he nodded to Buffy and another name was crossed off the list.

The afternoon passed. By the time Sheila walked in without a thought of knocking and asked what they'd come up with and if it was (hopefully) something she could kill or at least help Buffy kill; they had the list narrowed down to four reasonable possibilities. “One,” Willow began reeling off the list, “Amber was a witch, or tried to be, and died from a spell gone wrong. Two—”

“But that's only if you think Amber actually had a thought that wasn't about her hair,” Sheila interrupted skeptically, and frankly a bit harshly, considering what had happened to the poor girl.

“Wow, that's so funny I forgot to laugh,” Buffy shot back at her, gaining her notice for the first time. “Cheerleader dies horrible painful death. Score one for the Out Crowd.”

“Hey! Could we focus on the horrible death part?” Willow countered, just a bit sharply.

Clearly offended, clearly angry, Sheila moved towards Willow. “You think I don't know that?” she demanded harshly. Her eyes were ablaze. For a moment Giles thought he might have to intervene. Worse, he could see in Buffy's eyes that she was thinking something similar. No good could come of that.

But the tide of the conversation turned in an instant. “I've known Amber since we were four,” Sheila said with quieter, more controlled anger. And with firm determination. “And we're not gonna find her killer by making her out to be some kind of an interesting person who could be a demon or a witch or something. Whatever killed her, it had something to do with a guy, or with cheerleading. So...” Sheila took Willow's list from her unresisting hands and crossed off all of the possibilities but one.

It read: Someone else at Fondren High is a Witch and wanted Amber dead.

Everyone looked at one another. Buffy and Willow nodded in agreement. Giles almost gave voice to the thought that they still shouldn't rule out demonic involvement altogether so early in their investigation. He thought better of it. The girls had agreed on an avenue to explore and it was, he had to admit, one of the stronger possibilities. And so, he confined himself to warning them not to act too boldly or prematurely against any particular object of suspicion.

Why not let them take the lead in looking for human suspects? He could continue researching possible demon culprits nearly as well on his own. But he was not about to become involved in investigating the personal lives, relationships, and motivations of a lot of high school girls if he could help it.

Not given his own demonic troubles. Not now that the rules of his compulsions and attractions had changed in ways he didn't yet fully understand. Not when he was already missing time and waking up dressed to misbehave.

As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Giles knew that the real reason he had insisted on shifting Buffy's attention away from their own situation and towards Amber's demise wasn't because it was more important or even more urgent. It was because he didn't know where to begin to help himself. And the one being that could have helped him figure out what was happening to him had every motive not to do so.

_Oh really? Have you tried asking me nicely? Maybe I'd rather you did know about the little changes I've made._

**But I have asked you!** Giles insisted.

 _You asked me how I was controlling you and the girls this far from the Hellmouth_ , the demon replied. _But I'm not. Like I said, it's all you now._

 **What the devil is that supposed to mean!?!** Giles demanded silently, clenching his fist and then unclenching it at a look from Buffy. “Excuse me,” he said, rising abruptly. He fumbled through a hasty excuse about having a headache (which he did) and being tired (which he was) and went upstairs to lie down, confident that the girls could let themselves out.

Before he reached the top of the stairs the demon sighed theatrically and thought, _Okay, if you won't ask me the right questions, I won't let that spoil my fun. The question is not how I'm controlling you but how I've changed what makes you able to control yourself (and other people) or not, your hormones._


	10. Too Close for Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> XANDER: You think we haven't seen all this before? The part where you just cut us all out. Just step away from everything human and act like you're the law.  
> BUFFY: At some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me.... There's only me. I am the law.  
> ROBIN: That's good to know 'cause for a second there I thought it was more defensive, isolationist slayer crap.  
> ~BtVS 7.5 "Selfless", 7.22 "Chosen"

Buffy watched Willow watching worriedly as Giles climbed up the stairs and out of the room. Sheila must have noticed too, and had a strong opinion what to do about it. “I'm tired,” she announced abruptly, “I'm going to bed. We can work on this witch thing some more tomorrow.” On her way out the door, she added, pointedly, to Buffy, “It's getting kinda dark out. You should go patrol or something.”

For Sheila, that qualified as a subtle hint. One Buffy pretended not to get. “I don't think vampires are the big deal right now,” she hedged. Giles had obviously meant to dismiss all three of the girls, which was sort of a slap in the face to Willow, one that she shouldn't have to deal with alone right now. “You go on to bed, though. Me and Willow can start making a list of witch suspects for all of us to check out tomorrow.”

“Actually,” Willow countered both of them at once. “I'm pretty tired myself. Walk me home, Buffy? It really is getting dark, or anyway it will be soon.”

Sheila shrugged, grabbed her coat and left. Willow flashed Buffy a half hopeful, half apologetic smile under worried eyes. Suddenly, patrolling (alone) seemed like a very good idea. But the sun was already setting. And there were always bound to be vampires around somewhere in this God forsaken town. And Buffy was the Slayer. She could hardly say no to walking a friend/helpless-pregnant-girl home.

They walked the first block in awkward silence. Buffy studied the pattern of cracks in the sidewalk. There were a lot of them despite how new-constructiony the neighborhood looked over all. No trees were around to undermine this particular stretch of sidewalk either. Earthquakes then. Lots of them. This town must be right on a fault line. A huge crack in the Earth, just below the surface.

“So... how's your new school?” Willow asked, startling Buffy from her thoughts. She had almost managed to forget whose high-top sneakers were clomping along beside her. And now, she had even managed to startle Willow with her startledness, jerking her head up and half spinning in her direction, blond hair flying. Stammering less than whole words of confusion. Now Willow was looking down at her shoes, cheeks coloring. Smooth, Buffy. Smooth.

“It's, I mean it's fine,” Buffy finally managed. “I mean it's all girls, you know as in no boys.... Which is a bad thing, obviously. The no boys. Thing. I mean, not the 'no boy's thing' but the thing where there are no boys, obviously.”

Willow was looking at Buffy now. It was a weird, worried, uncomfortable, almost queasy look. A look like maybe Willow was wondering what she was getting at. “Because I like boys,” Buffy tried to clarify, “Not that I don't like girls. I just don't, like them like them, not that I'm looking for, I mean, who has time to date anyway, so yeah, I guess it's fine.” Oh, yeah, that was sooo much better. Not.

“Uhhuh, and the classes are okay?” Willow desperately redirected her. “Not too much homework? No monsters or demons or anything?”

“No, no, not any, at all,” Buffy assured her much too emphatically, still tense, thinking not so much of school as where she had been today instead, “So far, so good.” Silence reigned for what seemed like at least a full minute. “I did hear a couple of the girls say Ms. Porter was a witch, but I think they just mean...”

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “As in rhymes with. My Mom knows her, and... well she uses gender neutral language and all, but yeah.”

“Well, I wouldn't know,” Buffy admitted. “Haven't seen her yet.” They kept on like that. And hey, this was better. They were talking. To each other. Normally. About not last night. They could do this. Water under the bridge. Unrepeatable irrelevant fluke. Friendship unchanged. Nothing to see here, move it along.

And then Willow started talking about Giles. Her feelings for him. Their 'love'. Their *baby*. Her worries about what demonic possession was doing to her 'boyfriend'. Buffy was tuning most of it out while trying to sound supportive at the same time. Supportive and not pissed.

Not pissed that a smart, beautiful, kind total-package-girl like Willow was wasting her emotional energy and probably screwing up her whole life over some middle-aged letch. Someone who so obviously had picked her as his 'girlfriend' from among all the girls he was using to feed his demonic need for constant sex just so he could also use her for her brains, and to help keep Buffy from blowing the whistle to all the other Watchers. Manipulative bastard.

Buffy wished she could somehow pull the wool off from over Willow's eyes and make her see that Rupert Giles was the last person either of them (make that any of them) needed in their lives. Then at least she'd be able to call up the Council and trade him in for a real Watcher. She'd even let the new guy throw knives at her head whenever he wanted. Hell, she'd welcome it if it meant she could trust herself to keep her pants on again.

After what seemed like a million miles of trudging through the gathering dark, being supportive and biting her tongue, Buffy was relieved when they finally reached the large two-story house in a white picket neighborhood that Willow pointed out as her own. Well, she was relieved for a second anyway. And then she felt that old familiar feeling.

“Get behind me,” she whispered to Willow, “And stay close.”

“What is it?” Willow whispered back, “And why are we whispering?”

Buffy answered both questions with one quiet word, “Vampire.”

“Holy Hercules!” came the stunned gasp/shout from above. The thing jumped from the balcony and made a run for it, cross country, away from the street and towards the fence of the next back yard over. Buffy started to run after him but Willow clung to her, getting pulled from her feet and dragged a good yard before Buffy could register the problem and stop.

The vamp jumped the fence and was gone. If she left right this second, Buffy knew she could still catch him, but Willow would not let go. She would have had to break her friends fingers to pry herself loose. “Buffy, no!” Willow shouted, had been shouting the whole time, frantic, beside herself, in tears. “Please," she sobbed, "don't hurt him. Yeah, I know, he's a vampire, but he doesn't mean to be!”

Buffy cursed quietly under her breath. The vamp was long gone, but that wasn't the reason. One lousy vampire was the least of her problems. It wasn't just any vamp. It was Xander Harris. It had to be. And Willow had known that. Known it all along. Because she'd been seeing him. Hiding him. Imagining he was still her friend. Seeing what she wanted to see, just like she had with Giles.

And suddenly. Everything was clear. It all made sense. It was not complicated at all. The problem wasn't Willow or Sheila or even Giles. It was Buffy. She had taken her eye off the ball, forgotten everything Merrick had tried to teach her in the few short weeks he'd had to train her. The Slayer thing was about *one* girl, 'she alone'. There was no mystical prophecy about a Chosen One and her friends.

“Okay,” Buffy said flatly, knowing what she had to do, knowing that it was right, understanding with white-hot clarity. “That's it. This whole Slayerette thing? I'm over it. You, all of you, need to get one thing straight. I'm The Slayer, and you're not. And I say, it's time to call the Council. And when I do, I'm telling them everything.”


	11. Sucker Punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy: I invited you into my home and then you attacked my family!  
> Angel: I didn't bite her.  
> Buffy: Then why didn't you say something?  
> Angel: But I wanted to. I can walk like a man, but I'm not one. I wanted to kill you tonight.  
> ~BtVS 1.7 "Angel"

“Call the Council?” Willow felt like a broken record, but she launched into all the same arguments again anyway. “Buffy you can't. They'd take Giles away. And that's no good. Not for me, not for Sheila and not for our babies. Buffy, you said—just this morning—you said you understood that.”

Willow was starting to panic. They had been through this. All of this. What had changed? Nothing had changed! Nothing but Buffy's mind. “Buffy, I love him!” she pleaded desperately, hoping against hope to change it back.

Buffy would not be moved. “I know you believe that,” she said, the way you say it to someone who clearly isn't thinking straight. “But once he's gone, you'll see—”

Willow didn't let her finish that thought. “No!” she screamed, turning to face Buffy. Getting in her face. “I'm not listening to this! Giles hasn't done anything wrong that he could help! It's this place! Location!!! Location!!! Location!!! Standing at the Mouth of Hell!?! Well, guess what, I was born at the Mouth of Hell.

“And if you think you're just going to waltz into *my* hometown with your L.A. expectations and start passing judgment on everything and everybody in my life—If you think you're going to tell me who to care about?! Who to protect?! Boy have you got another thing coming; I don't care if you're the Chosen One or God Almighty!!!!"

Buffy's face was beat red, her jaw clenched. Like the two fists at her sides. Their noses were two inches apart. Neither moved. Neither blinked. The little part of Willow's brain that was assigned to watch out for things like spiders, frogs, and mortal danger told her that she should back off; but she was just too mad to listen.

It didn't matter. After a long moment, Buffy spun on her heals and strode off, across the yard and down the street, moving at surprising speed on those short little legs of hers. Willow might have gone after her, but to do so required an affirmative decision to move. Which required her to have a thought. And when she though, she thought better of it.

What good would it do to test whether Buffy really had it in her to take a swing at a pregnant girl? Clearly, walking away was her chosen means to avoid that. To follow would be tempting fate. And either way, what would it prove? What would it help?

No. Angry shouting was not going to stop Buffy from ratting Giles out to the Council. Or from hunting Xander down and killing him either. What she needed was a plan. A new angle she hadn't yet thought of to convince Buffy it was either the right thing or at least in her best interests to hold her peace and let Willow make her own choices. Where both guys were concerned.

With that in mind, Willow fished her key out of her book bag and turned to open the door. She had to call Giles, first off. That was a given. He needed to know what Buffy was thinking of doing, about his part of it anyway. Maybe he'd think of a way to talk her out of it. Considering that he was a super genius, he probably would in fact.

Xander was a little bit harder problem. It wasn't like Giles was going to be thrilled he'd been hanging around. In fact, if Buffy went to him about it right now, he'd probably help her sharpen her stake. And, given that Xander could be draining the blood of a fresh victim at this very moment, even Willow couldn't say she was entirely convinced that not killing him was a good decision.

But anything else felt too wrong even to think about. Whatever Giles said, whatever Buffy said, the bottom line was, Xander had never asked to be a vampire. It was something that someone else had done too him. Xander was a victim of his sire in just about exactly the same way that Giles was a victim of his incubus. How could it be fair to kill him for that?

Willow took a deep breath. She had to set it aside, the thing about Xander. She was too overwhelmed to deal with more than one huge crisis at a time. So when her key turned in the lock and her front door opened, her eyes immediately focused on the phone sitting on the end table by the blue sofa on the far side of the room.  The phone she was going to use to call Giles.

Which was why, just inside the doorway, before she could even turn to close the door, Willow stumbled over something lying there.  Something big.  Her knees bent and her hands flew out in front of her to break her fall. Still catching her breath, Willow rolled onto her back and sat up, facing the door.

When she saw what it was that she'd tripped over, Willow let out a scream. She scooted backwards on her behind, screaming even more as she helplessly kicked the body several times; her feet flailing, scrambling for leverage to push her as far back from it as possible.

When Willow finally got to her feet and looked carefully at the scene before her, it didn't change. There, lying at her feet in a pool of blood was the body of her father, Ira Rosenberg. His throat had been ripped out. The blood no longer flowed from the wound.

Willow knew there was no hope of finding a pulse in her father's neck, but she knelt down and tried anyway. Her heart broke like a dam, pouring out thousands of gallons of sorrow per minute. “No!” she wailed throwing her body down over his as if to shield him from eternity. Holding on tight, as if he were not already gone, as if she could make him stay.

Pulling him into her arms, keening, sobbing, “No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!” she held him and rocked him like a child until her face, her clothes, her hands, and her long red hair were soaked with his blood.

“Oh, God, Willow! Are you alright?” Willow glared up at Xander, anger breaking through the few scattered bits of heart that her grief had left intact. “Stupid question,” he apologized, sounding sincere and even sympathetic, though much too calm. “Are you injured?”

Willow froze and stared at him. Astounded by his chutzpah. At least her rage had stopped her tears, for now. But she couldn't answer him. She couldn't even curse him. Her throat felt like it was swollen shut.

He must have seen what she was thinking in her eyes, though; because suddenly he was answering the charge that she still hadn't found her voice to make. “Hey, whoa. You don't think?” He hung his head, just a bit, “Of course you think. But, Will, I didn't do this. Okay, yeah, I'm a monster and all that, but I still *love* you. I'm still your *friend*. I could never—besides, I know you didn't have to let me go before. At the Bronze.”

“Why should I believe you?” Willow demanded, less harshly that she meant to yet still more harshly that she could manage to really mean, sort of believing him already, in spite of everything.

Xander shrugged. “Well, if you don't believe the whole, 'I love you' argument... Okay, here's one. Why would I leave all of this delicious looking blood?” Willow wrinkled her nose in disgust, but he had a point. “Look at the wound,” he insisted gently. “Does it even look like it was done with teeth?”

Stealing herself, mentally putting on her Science Club Cap, Willow examined the gash in her father's neck. Clinically, the way she would the inside of a dead fetal pig. His throat had been ripped open alright, but not by a mouth full of fangs, or even by razor sharp claws. There were bits of glass imbedded in the jagged, irregular wounds.

Decision suddenly crystallizing in her mind, Willow carefully picked up one of the larger bits of glass that she now saw lying near the body. She held it under her nose and sniffed, then handed it across the threshold to Xander for confirmation. “What does that smell like?” she asked.

The Vampire's face was grim, serious. “Blood,” he said, “and whiskey. Not the cheap stuff either.”

“That's what I thought,” Willow agreed, firmly, calmly. Certain in her resolve to face the truth, to follow the evidence, wherever it led. Then the world swam out of focus and went black as she fell the very short distance to the floor, still clutching her father's body in her arms.

 


	12. Sleepwalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: The guilt, it-it's, it's pretty hard to bear, and it won't go away soon.  
> Cordelia: I guess you should know, since you helped raise that demon that killed that guy that time?  
> Giles: Yes. Do let's bring that up as often as possible.  
> ~BtVS 2.11 "Ted"

**Now let me see if I understand this. During my recovery period, when you had me believing that, out of decency or, or Not so much decency, I suppose as, as concern for, I don't know, a favored *pet*—you, you had me believing that you were holding your peace, letting me rest, and, and recuperate!?! In—instead, you, you, you...** _Yes,_ the incubus cut in in exasperation. _Can't you even spit out a sentence in your own head?_ Giles tried to work out a response to that, but he was too beside himself with indignation.

 _Like I already told you,_ the demon went on, _I made modifications to the hormone secreting tissues of your testicle, so that they now synthesize a hormone that causes chemical changes in your brain, allowing it to actually properly interpret the otherwise weak and useless human pheromone signal that indicates when a female is ovulating. In turn, this triggers not only your own (impressively magnified) arousal response but also the release of a modified male pheromone designed to actually find it's way into a part of the female's brain capable of reading it (no small task with your fucked up neurophysiology). And presto! When ever you are in the pretense of a fertile female you are both irresistible to women and, in turn, unable to resist them._

Giles stood in the middle of his bedroom, running his hands through his hair, starting in one direction and then another. Turning himself in circles, inside and out. **“That's, that's—”** He clapped his mouth shut when he heard his words begin to be spoken aloud. None the less, he saw the embarrassing irony in the last word, even as it came to his mind, **diabolical.**

The demon only chuckled. Giles wished he had a drink in his hand. But the bottles were downstairs. With the girls. Who were still loudly debating what to do next. Besides, given his recent blackout, that probably wasn't a wise choice. Never the less, when the last of his young associates had tromped and slammed out the front door, he went down and poured himself a neat double scotch and planted himself on the couch. It seemed as good a place as any to worry and feel sorry for himself.

So his misbehavior was now directly triggered by the presence of an ovulating female. Besides being a terrible thing in and of itself, that meant that one of the women he'd been with last night had to have been in that particular unfortunate condition. As he'd already impregnated Willow and Sheila, that left just two possibilities. The unrepentant killer of the real Lydia Chalmers. Or Buffy.

Giles chewed on that for a while as he slowly nursed his drink, making it last lest he be tempted to pour another. It was Not-Lydia. It had to be. He had reacted to her long before Buffy arrived. Even at the hospital, he'd felt something. Yes, that had to be it. It was the only thing that made sense. And given her age (at a guess he'd say between 35 and 40) perhaps the risk was no so great as to be agonized about in the absence of further evidence.

He stayed there in the dim lamplight a while longer. Sipping his Scotch. Studiously avoiding the thought that, just because Not-Lydia may have been ovulation was no reason to assume that Buffy hadn't been. He kept that and most other thoughts at bey, his mind relatively blank. His anxiety formless and obscure. But finally, he couldn't avoid acknowledging the other elephant in the room any longer.

 **Where did I go today?** He asked again. **I'm sure whatever I've done can't be undone. You'll have seen to that. Why not tell me? At least if I know what new unpleasantness may be in store, perhaps I'll be better prepared to meet it. To both our goods.** The demon seemed to consider this. _No,_ it concluded finally, _I still think it's best you don't know. If that changes, I'll tell you._

“ **Goddamnyou! Tell me!”** Giles shouted, thumping his half empty glass down on the table hard enough that it fell over and spilled onto the wood. The incubus was taken aback, no easy feat. It recovered quickly. Infuriatingly, it seemed concerned. _Whoa, easy there big fella,_ it warned gently, sending out calming chemical signals of it's own devising. These had the desired effect. In moments, Giles was fast asleep. And cleaning up the coffee table with a towel from the kitchen counter.

 


	13. Suspect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joyce: How are your new classes?  
> Buffy: Good.  
> Joyce: 'Good'. Is there the slightest chance that if I asked you what was wrong you would tell me? Course not. It would take all the fun out of guessing.  
> ~BtVS 1.2 "When She Was Bad"

Buffy heard the siren coming a long way off. From the first faint wail, it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She knew it was approaching even before the sound grew perceptibly louder. That was when she turned and began walking the few blocks back to Willow's house. When it actually came into sight, she broke into a run.

The paramedics only just beat her there. About the time the cops started showing up. For a moment, it seemed as though Willow was being arrested, but the two men physically pulling her from her doorway were EMTs, not police officers. She was screaming. Crying. Covered in blood.

Xander! The lousy bloodsucker must have doubled back, must have finally gotten his invite. More than one kind of love can be blind. Buffy rushed headlong towards Willow, no thought but to make sure she would live... and maybe to find out which way the vamp had gone. To get a clue about where she could find and kill him.

“Whoa there, Miss!” Buffy nearly ran right over the officer who had 'caught her' by the shoulders and was 'holding her back'. She managed to stop just in time. A plaque pinned to his shirt identified him as Sargent Martin, SPD.

“My friend,” Buffy tried to explain. “Willow. Is she hurt? I mean badly?”

“She's fine,” he assured her a little too definitely, attempting a caring, fatherly tone that wasn't quite. Buffy gave him a quick, careful once over. He was maybe fifty years old with gray, thinning hair. He was a little over weight but still muscular under the fat. His generically brown eyes were dull and tired.

“But all that blood,” she began to argue, deciding Martin was just what he seemed to be. An old cop trying to make it through another however many shifts he had to retirement by pretending hard to care.

“Not hers,” he explained, offhandedly, forgetting the fatherly thing for a minute. Then picking it back up again, he laid one hand gently back on Buffy's shoulder and explained, “I'm afraid a man was killed here, an Ira Rosenberg.” At Buffy's horrified look, he asked, “Do you know anythings or did you see anything...” and just like that, Willow was gone in the ambulance and Buffy was stuck there giving a statement.

The night didn't end there. When she described seeing a 'young man' flee the scene just as Willow arrived, every detail of everything she had to say suddenly became much more important. The first cop called other cops over. Then the lead detective. Then her partner. And everyone had to hear all about it, over and over.

When the Detectives left for the hospital to interview Willow and her mother, Buffy thought she might finally be able to go home. But no, they wanted to take her down to the police station to talk to a sketch artist.

“We'll call your parents to meet us there,” Martin offered, sounding like he really expected her to be glad or relieved or something.

“No, you can't!” was out of Buffy's mouth before she had a thought about how it sounded. But from the officers' looks, she had no trouble figuring out that it had sounded shocking. Suspicious. Wrong. “...Because she's... uhm... out of town,” Buffy tried to recover. They weren't buying it.

They had to call her mom then. Of course they did. They already had her phone number. From Buffy's statement form. It had never occurred to her to give them her new Slayer-Business-Only cell phone number, the one Willow had gotten for her using Giles' money if not his name. Maybe that would have been worse anyway.

As it was, Joyce met them at the station, almost as angry as she was terrified. Trying not to show either. To be strong, supportive Mom. My Buffy right or wrong Mom. Somehow that only made it worse. Martyr Mom defending the indefensible. Hello to the guilt.

By the time it was all over, at nearly midnight, Buffy would not have been surprised to have been accused of killing Ira Rosenberg herself, or at least asked for an alibi. It never came to that though.

All she had really had to do, besides answer the same questions over and over, was describe the 'person of interest' she had seen. She tried to be as vague as possible without saying anything flat out inconsistent with Xander, in case someone else had seen him too. She didn't want them to get too good a sketch though. They weren't going to catch him and trying might get them killed.

As it was, it looked kind of like it could be him... or about a million other young, White (or Hispanic) guys with dark hair and eyes. That was probably about the best she could hope for. Maybe it would keep them from finding him until she could get home and get her Mom to bed. Then it would be her turn to catch Dr. Rosenberg's killer. To put a stop to him, once and for all.

But Mom didn't go to bed. She said she was 'too tired' to sleep. Buffy knew she meant too worried. Instead she sat downstairs watching CNN Headline News, 'a whole days news ever half hour', over and over again until dawn. Drinking black coffee like someone who is very much afraid that she might fall asleep at any time.

She didn't ask Buffy any questions or suggest that she had held back anything from the police, had done anything wrong. She didn't stop her from going upstairs to shower and get into bed without saying another word about it. But they both knew she wasn't staying up to watch the news. She was staying up to listen for the sound of her daughter sneaking out of the house.

In the morning she made a huge, 'I feel guilty' breakfast, with both omelets and pancakes. Then she drove Buffy to Miss Porter's, walked her to the front door and gave her strict instructions to be waiting at that same door at 4:15 when the school let out.

 


	14. As Much As Salt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: I've been at Mister Donut since the TV did that snowy thing. How come *you're* the Wakey Girl? I mean, this time, it's not your boyfriend who's the cold-blooded... Jelly doughnut?  
> Oz: Everything all right?  
> Buffy: Yeah. Uh, what happened with the inspection of the body?  
> Willow: Anyone? They're yummy delicious!  
> ~BtVS 3.4 "Beauty and the Beasts"

The room was dark and cool. Willow was calm now. Or drained, more like. Drained and moderately sedated. At least she wasn't crying any more. She felt like she had no tears left. She had used up her lifetime supply.

Maybe if she lay still long enough, if she concentrated on not thinking, she could finally fall asleep. Having already been up all night should help some. Having Sheila not there definitely would.

Sheila trying to be warm and motherly, trying to be appropriately sad yet supportive, was painful to watch. Like a stiff, amateur thespian taking a stab at playing King Lear. The emphasis was always falling on the wrong lines, the synthetic emotion just a little bit off.

She had showed up at least, had walked right out of a lecture without even trying to wrap it up, apparently. But probably more because you didn't say 'no' to cops investigating a murder than because she wanted to make sure Willow was alight. She'd left again after answering their questions, wanting to get to bed in time to be up for work in the morning.

That had surprised both the cops and the doctors, but not Willow. Left to her own devices, Sheila was not good at showing up for things that weren't work related. It wasn't that she didn't care, exactly. But she probably assumed that, whatever Willow needed, the hospital could handle it. Just like she had always assumed that Ira could.

Ira, who was dead now. Her father. Dead and gone. Gone forever. And ever. And ever. Murdered. Her father had been murdered. Just like on TV, only nothing like that. No fun to solve who-dun-it. No cleverly misleading clues. The clues were pretty straightforward. They insisted on a single likely suspect. The one person on Earth who it could not be.

Stop thinking, Willow warned herself. If she wasn't careful she would give herself another panic attack. She'd start hyperventilating again, maybe even pass out. That could not happen. It was hard enough to keep an entire hospital full of medical professionals (who had known her all her life) from figuring out she was pregnant without going and passing out again.

She just had to not think. That was all. No thinking. She could do that. Well no, alright she couldn't do that. But she could think about something else.

Like Xander. Like the fact that Buffy might be killing him right now. Or the other way round. Even though he was her friend and Buffy knew that. Even though he had been there to make sure she was okay and to dial 9-1-1 when she wasn't. After she had found her father's body. And the glaring evidence that he had probably been killed by Giles.

Giles. God, no. Please no. Damnit Willow, stop thinking!

Giles has murdered her father. He probably didn't even know it. With the losing time and the drowning braincells. And she loved him. The man she loved was a borderline alcoholic murderer being driven insane by the demon in his one remaining testicle.

And she was having his baby. Mozel Tov! What a blessing. I mean, what kind of karma did you have to have to be that poor baby anyway?

Not that she really believed in that. Or probably not, but hey, the supernatural world had already turned out to be weirder than she'd ever imagined, and where did that leave God, exactly, because if you asked Willow, He kind of seemed to be missing in action with all these demons running around wrecking lives and killing people. How, exactly was that part of the plan?

Willow needed to talk to someone. Someone with whom she could be completely honest. Someone who would understand, and who would still keep her confidences even if she didn't. Someone to whom taking the idea of God seriously didn't sound stupid and out of date. Someone who could know that she suspected Giles of murder and not immediately rush to turn him in.

Sitting up a little more fully against the pillows at her back, Willow reached for the phone by her bedside to call Sheila. After the fifth ring it went to voicemail. Because Sheila was in school. Duh. Her phone had to be on silent. She was probably texting Willow a reminder of that very fact right now.

Willow didn't just need a phone, she needed her phone. Which was in her book bag. That she had dropped somewhere between her front yard and the middle of the living room floor. Which meant it was either in the hands of her mother (who could probably be trusted not to bother) or the police, who could not.

Her mom had to have it. Why would the cops take it? It was purple and pink with gold butterflies on it, so clearly a girl's and not the supposed killer's. She couldn't worry about that right now. There wasn't space. She'd just have to assume.

Willow needed help. She needed comfort. She needed support. She needed her father. Not as much as air, but a lot. How was she ever going to do anything right without his guiding hand to correct her and keep her on track? How was she going to deal with the mess she'd made of her life the minute she'd started lying and keeping secrets from him?

The answer to that was obvious. Though it made her feel like pitifully ungrateful traitor. In the absence of her father, the person she needed to hold, comfort, and support her, to guide and protect her, was Giles.

Which meant that she could not share her suspicions with anyone. Not Giles, and certainly not Buffy. Not even Sheila, she now realized. Maybe their friendship could withstand such a secret, but this was no time to test it. The stakes were too high to make a bet that could be lost.

Her heart thumping, her fingers trembling, saying a silent prayer of apology, Willow dialed Giles's number. His hello was calm and polite. He didn't get worried until he heard her voice. And even then, he had to ask her what was wrong. Which meant no one had told him about Ira's murder. Including Buffy.

Before Willow had the time to explain anything to him, before she could even begin to process what to say and what to leave out, she got yet another nasty shock. “Excuse me!” a shrill, indignant female voice demanded from Giles's end of the line. “Uhm, we're not done talking(?)”

Giles made a few indeterminate sounds vaguely in the 'yes, but...' family. This only sparked further shrillness. “Hello! What could possibly be that important! Tell them to call back!” To Willow's further shock, Giles hesitated, seeming uncertain. Seeming to consider it.

Willow's heart sank. How much more could this relationship possibly be expected to withstand? Wasn't her father's murder obstacle enough? Of all the possible disasters to pile on top of that, why this? Why her?

And it was her. That voice was unmistakable. As unmistakable as the only reason she could possibly have for ditching Kent Prep to have a vitally important conversation with the ex-librarian of her old school.

There was only one logical conclusion. Of all the girls in all the world, Giles had slept with the one girl who had been the bane of Willow's existence her entire school-going life. The one who had psychologically battered her since the age of six and always stood ready to add insult to injury.

Giles had slept with Cordelia.

 


	15. And Now for Something Completely Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles: Why should someone want to harm Cordelia?  
> Willow: Maybe because they met her?  
> Cordelia: Excuse me? Who gave you permission to exist?  
> ~BtVS 1.2 "The Harvest", 2.3 "Witch"

Giles took a slow, deep breath and then another as he tried to calm his nerves, gather his thoughts, and avoid a frustrated explosion of temper. Willow waited on the other end of the line, stammering, starting to ramble, not approaching whatever it was she'd called to talk to him about. Still less addressing the subject of to what, or rather to whom she was obviously reacting. Waiting instead, for him to explain.

Cordelia. Of course Cordelia. Why not Cordelia? There she stood before him, the Queen 'C' of Sunnydale High, in all of her fabled unpleasantness, hands on her hips, fingers drumming, foot tapping, eyes narrowed, frown set. A stubborn, sullen, frightened child, doing her school-yard best to be intimidating. Under other circumstances, it might have been amusing.

But with Willow's voice faltering on the other end of the line, near tears; Cordelia's childish foot stamping was irritating and the guilt that feeling inspired in him, maddening. “Hang up the phone!?!” she carped at him. She drew breath to go on carping, but she held her tongue when he shot her a look of restrained violence that put her 'icy stare' to shame.

“Cordelia,” he said tightly, “give me a moment.”

“A moment?” Willow questioned, somewhere between bewildered and indignant. “I get a moment now? One *she* gives you?”

“Willow, I'm... well, sort of i-in the, the middle of, of...” Cordelia stood with her hands folded, rolling her eyes at the sound of Willow's name. She put on a good show of being angry and in control, but anyone with an once of sense could figure out that she must actually be feeling very hurt, very alone, and very much out of her depth. And here he was taking a phone call in the middle of...

 _Hey, eye on the ball, pal. Which of these two do you still want to be fucking in a year?_ **Shut up, and keep out of it! I've enough else to deal with without you piping up!** And he had. _Don't I know it!_

“Oh, oh no! Seriously!?!” Willow still sounded confused and hurt, but now there was anger building in her voice as well. “You're about to tell me your too busy—busy with *Cordelia*—to talk to me!” _See what I mean?_ **Shut it.**

“That's wasn't exactly—” Giles started to explain, but she cut him off again.

“Maybe not exactly, but close enough!” she snapped. But her chastisement didn't end there. “So what am I interrupting!?!” she demanded. “Obviously not the part where you rip her clothes off and fuck her, because then you wouldn't have stopped to answer the phone! So, what was it, the part where you make those kicked puppy eyes and tell her how the fate of the world depends on every single one of us protecting you!?! No matter... no matter...” Her voice broke off in a sob.

“Oh, Willow, Willow, no, I'm not...I'm just... I'm sorry, I just—” Suddenly Giles heard a click and then a dial tone.

“Ummm, excuse you!” Cordelia seethed at him. He turned to see her standing at the far end of his phone cord, next to the wall-mounted telephone to which the receiver in his hand was tethered. The fire in her eyes has become a bit more impressive. She still seemed a petulant child, but one with teeth. “We were plotting here?” she reminded/scolded him. “You can chat with your little girlfriend some other time. This is serious.”

Giles gripped the receiver tighter in his hand. He had a momentary vision of Cordelia's eyes widening in terror as he wrapped the phone cord a few time round her neck and pulled it tight. But no. Deep breaths. Deep, calming steadying breaths.

He would spend a few moments dealing with Cordelia, Giles decided, so that he could call Willow back, in privacy, as quickly as possible. _You're making a mistake there, pal,_ the demon insisted. _Willow needs you now, not in a few minutes. Didn't you hear it in her voice? You're dropping the ball, man._ **Says the monster that threw all these innocent girls at me like so many balls to drop or catch at once(!)** _Touch_ _é._

“I'm sorry,” he said to Cordelia, trying to force a conciliatory tone with only moderate success. “Both for the interruption and, well... in general.”

“Oh Yeah?” Cordelia challenged, convincingly vicious now that her ire was truly up, “Well if my daddy finds out you're the one who did this, you are going to be so very beyond 'sorry'.”

“I don't doubt that,” Giles admitted his tone still carefully controlled, stifling a nervous laugh. “And I confess I don't entirely understand your motives for keeping my identity a secret, although I very much appreciate it, of course.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “My parents know that I'm pregnant,” she explained exasperatedly. “They found out the same time I did, after your other little delinquent slut burned the school down and put me in the hospital.”

“Yes, I gathered that,” Giles said, trying hard not to sound as impatient as he felt.

“Ergo, I need your help,” Cordelia admitted, looking as though the words left a bad taste in her mouth.

“I'm afraid I still don't follow,” Giles replied, honestly baffled.

Cordelia sighed grandly and flounced down onto the couch, making a show of settling in for the long arduous task of explaining the simplest things to such a fool. “If they didn't know,” she explained, ever so impatiently, “I could just go to Planned Parenthood or something. But they do, know. Which means that we are going to have to make it look like an accident.”

“Oh for God's sake!” Giles huffed, having had just about as much of her theatricality as he could stand for one day, “You needn't keep talking about it as though we were panning a murder.”

“Boy do you not get it!” Cordelia snapped back at him. “As far as my parents are concerned, that's exactly what we're doing.”

“Nonsense,” Giles insisted, “Whatever their politics, however... disappointed they might feel with your decision, an abortion is a serious medical procedure. It needs to be done by a professional, and your parents need to know what's going on so that they can be on the look out for complications during your recovery. I'm sure they can put aside any, any ideological objections for the sake of your health and safety.”

“Wow,” Cordelia replied bitterly, “either you're a lot stupider than you look, or you really have no idea what crazy backwards place you've moved to.”

“Sunnydale?” Giles asked, baffled. Of course to was a crazy, backward place; but how would she know that?

“No, you moron,” She nearly snarled back, “America!”

 


	16. Almost but not Quite Entirely Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny: You told me to watch Angel. You told me to keep him from the Slayer. I tried. But there are other factors. There are terrible things happening here that we cannot control.  
> Enyos: We control nothing. We are not wizards, Janna. We merely play our part.  
> ~BtVS 2.14 "Innocence"

Buffy sat in the last stall in the girl's room at Miss Porters. The one no one wanted to use. The one with the tricky lock and the toilet that had to be flushed more than once with a pause in between. She held her legs out in front of her so that they couldn't be seen under the stall, wishing they were just an inch longer so that she could have propped them comfortably against the stall door.

“Damnit,” she cursed quietly, under her breath, as Sheila's phone went to voice mail, just as Willow's had. Willow might still be in the hospital; and even if she wasn't, who could blame her for turning her phone off today? But where the hell was Sheila? After all, she was the one who had been so insistent on working the witch angle on the whole human combustion deal. And Buffy knew for a fact that Fondren High was still closed for repairs.

And then it hit her in all its obviousness, not the why but the where. Sheila was at Giles' apartment. Where else would she be that she wouldn't even bother to take her cell phone? Because it was almost like she hadn't even left home. And besides, even if she had thought about it, everyone who had her number knew they could get a hold of her there too.

The first post-lunch bell rang just as Buffy dialed the number. She cursed again, even more quietly, but also more elaborately. Miss Porter's was not the kind of school where no one noticed or cared if you were not in class. If Buffy was not in Ms. Milligan's Geography class in six minutes, there would be a campus wide manhunt ending in disciplinary action that her mother would have to hear about. She was already on thin ice for ditching the day before.

“Hello?” Rupert Giles answered wearily, bordering on crossly. Buffy had to fight hard to keep her temper in check. So help her, if he launched into another one of his snarky, whining, poor-me-I'm-force-to-abuse-people bitchfests.... Well she didn't know what, since they were only talking on the phone. But something. Something unpleasant.

“Hello?” he repeated, sounding even more bewildered than annoyed.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah,” Buffy managed, “I just...” there was no good segue. “Is Sheila there?”

Giles breathed out in relief. At first Buffy thought it was because he was eagerly anticipating handing over the phone and not having to talk to her. But then he said, “No. I haven't seen her today. What with school off, I thought she might be sleeping in.”

So what was he relieved about? Just the fact that she hadn't called specifically to yell at him? Why would she with everything that was happening? For that matter, how could he think Sheila was sleeping in? Why wouldn't he assume she was with Willow after—

There was only one explanation. He didn't know. He didn't know and now she had to tell him. And still get off the phone within four... make that three minutes.

There was nothing to do but launch into it before he had to ask if she was still there again. “Okay,” she said, bracing herself to be interrupted and questioned pointlessly, “Here's the thing and I need you to just listen because I don't have much time.” She heard him make a preparatory noise in the direction of speech but plowed ahead anyway.

“Willow's father was killed by a vampire last night. That old friend of hers, Xander something. I think she may have invited him in.”

“But I—” Giles started in.

“Yeah, so did, I,” Buffy cut him off impatiently, “But I guess she didn't listen. Anyway, Willow completely lost it. They took her away in an ambulance, probably like to the psych ward or something.”

“Dear Go—”

“Save it. I think she'll be fine, or not fine, but not crazy. Just in shock.”

“Well reg—”

“Not the time. Listen. If Willow is still in the hospital, Sheila is probably there with her. If not, who knows. Just... I don't know, if either of them comes up with some crazy theory about how it wasn't him, just... keep them busy, researching that witch stuff or whatever. I'm gonna take care of him tonight just as soon as my mom falls asleep.”

The second bell rang. The tardy bell. Giles was starting to say something but Buffy didn't notice what. “Gotta go.” she said hurriedly and hung up. She turned her phone on silent, slipped it into the jacket pocket of her uniform and hurried to class.

She opened the door as quietly as she could, but it made no difference. The other sixteen girls in the class were sitting silently, their books already dutifully open, staring at her as she tiptoed in. Even if they hadn't been, the only empty seat was her assigned seat, front and center.

Ms. Milligan gave Buffy a sever look and handed her a detention slip. She had to be at school an hour early in the morning with that slip, signed by her mother. Nothing more was said about it. Ms. Milligan just launched into her lesson about Peru or Chilli or one of those Inca countries, or Aztec or something. She didn't even call on Buffy for spite, which was better than she could have expected from some of the other teachers.

Her next class, Mrs. Boil's English class, was one long object lesson in how not to be like Buffy, who clearly hadn't done the reading and thus, presumably, did not care about her future. Her Biology teacher, Miss McNight, at least had the decency to ignore her and let her take a cat nap. Which ened up lasting until the three fifteen bell that marked the start of the truly ironically named “Free Period.”

For slackers like Buffy, girls who weren't on any sports teams or in the band or anything, Free Period meant study hall. In the library. Buffy had never had exactly a warm and fuzzy feeling about libraries, what with the whole quiet and dusty and alphabetically boringness of them. Since her initial run-in with Rupert Giles, she liked them even less.

Worse still, the new librarian/computer science teacher gave her the creeps, a feeling that was made that much creepier by the fact that there was no good reason for it at all. Ms. Calendar came across all warm and friendly in a not at all overly or fakey way. She was young, confident, energetic, good-looking, well dressed, just slightly to the cool side of completely normal; and she obviously knew her stuff.

Ms. Calendar seemed determined to help every single girl understand the material, even Buffy. But at the same time, she wasn't one to call you out in front of everyone for not knowing something. In fact, she should have been Buffy's favorite teacher. But there was just this feeling, something she couldn't put her finger on but also couldn't ignore.

She definitely wasn't a vampire, and although Buffy supposed she couldn't be quite sure, she didn't think she was a demon or anything either. It was more like... like she was just a bit too keen to keep up with what Buffy was up to, even if she was always subtle about it. Like the way she was obliquely glancing at Buffy over the tops of the papers she was grading right now.

It seemed like she was always watching, if not always quite so literally. Always keeping track, like a... like a.... The penny dropped. Like a Watcher.


	17. Better Late Than Never?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: This is just the worst thing that's ever happened. Ever!  
> Xander: I know. I know. It's just... when I look at you now, it's like I'm seeing you for the first time.  
> Willow: I'm talking about Buffy and Cordelia.  
> Xander: Me, too.... Let's just put our heads together and think of something. Okay, one of us here is pretty darn smart, and I am... just in Hell.  
> ~BtVS 3.5 "Homecoming"

The phone rang. Willow stared at it. She'd already been told that she could be discharged today, as soon as her mom came to get her. It was not her mom calling though. She wouldn't have bothered. She'd get there when she got there. It wasn't like the hospital was going to let Willow leave without her.

It could have been Buffy, she guessed. Or Sheila. But she doubted it. It was Giles calling. Had to be. He'd taken his 'moment' (all twenty-seven minutes of it) and now he was ready to smooth everything over and go back to being the devoted boyfriend.

The phone kept on ringing. Willow had counted ten rings so far, and there had been a few before she'd started counting. Now that he'd had his moment, with Cordelia, apparently he was not the least bit worried that he might be intruding on her time. Now, in his time, it was urgent.

Willow picked up the receiver and slammed it back down. There, that was more than a hint. What said, 'leave me a lone' more clearly than that? Nothing. That was what.

Maybe it was too clear, Willow thought, feeling suddenly panicky. She wanted to say 'leave me alone right now', not 'I'm leaving you forever'. Not 'feel free to leave me for Cordelia'. Or Sheila. Or Buffy. Or London.

Frantically, Willow grabbed the phone from her bedside and dialed *69. When she heard the sound of the line being picked up on the first ring, Willow practically wailed into the receiver, “Gi—Uhm—B-Baby is that you? I'm so sorry, I—”

“Don't be 'Baby'.” There was a grin in Xander's voice, cheerful, playfully mocking. “If you start picking up on the first ring you'll lose your mysterious, aloof, hard-to-get quality.” Then his tone became gentler, more serious. As if it had taken him a moment to remember that she would still be in pain. “How are you?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

Willow was at a loss. Between the hurt of realizing that Giles *still* hadn't tried to call her back, that he was *still* having his 'moment' with Cordelia... and the dislocating mundanity of having her late best friend turned vampire call her on the phone like a normal, living person... it was hard to know what to say. But she had to say something. The silence kept stretching and stretching. So...

“You have phones down there? I thought you lived in the sewers.”

Xander gave a slight chuckle of either relief or nervousness, it was hard to say. “Nah, I stay as far away from those freaks as I can. What with the chanting, and the bowing and the whole Master/Minion dynamic. Not my thing.”

It was hard to tell if Xander meant exactly what he said. Harder even than when he was alive. Either way, he didn't elaborate. Not about where he was, how he survived or whose phone he was using. He just asked Willow how she was doing again. But she still wasn't ready to go there.

Instead she jumped right into the most important thing Xander needed to know. After all, they could be interrupted. It could happen.

“You have to be careful,” she explained urgently. “Buffy's out to get you. More than before even. She saw you at the house and now she thinks you killed my dad.”

Xander sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he admitted. “I don't guess you can call her off?” he asked, not sounding very hopeful. “Would she listen to you?”

Willow made a small sound of distress and guilt and braced herself for the inevitable babbling. “I don't think so,” she apologized. “Not about this. I mean. She just thinks you've got me fooled into thinking you're still you and that I'm basically an idiot. About guys anyway. Oh! Uh, you know not guys as in... People. She thinks I'm a bad judge of who, you know, is one.”

Xander smelled a rat. And no wonder. Could it have been more obvious? “What you mean,” he corrected her, his tone sounding a little bit stern but still not unfriendly, “is that she won't believe you're right about me not being the killer because you aren't about to explain to her how you know and who is. Now, I'm just guessing here, but could it be someone who falls roughly into the category of 'guys' and answers to the name of Gi—Baby? How'm I doin' so far?”

“Too well,” Willow admitted. “Xander I'm sorry,” she reiterated. “You know I still care about you. I probably always will. And I'm glad you're not completely dead, really. Even if I shouldn't be and even if... I mean I don't think I want to know if... But, anyway, maybe you should get out of town. I mean, with the Hellmouth and everything, Buffy's pretty much stuck here.”

“Maybe,” Xander admitted, in a guarded tone that suggested he had no intention of doing any such thing. “The problem is, I've got this... well, problem.”

“A bigger problem than having The Slayer declare you Demonic Enemy Number One?” Willow asked doubtfully.

“Much bigger,” Xander insisted.

Willow was truly baffled. “Is it the Master?”

“Much worse,” Xander declared. And then, after what Willow was almost sure was a deliberate pause for dramatic effect, “I'm in love with a beautiful, human girl. A girl whose life is scary and messy and complicated and bound to keep her here. Maybe you know her. Her name is Willow Rosenberg.”


	18. Keeping Up Appearances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: Uh, Cordelia just has a history of trying too hard.  
> Cordelia: What? I can't have layers?  
> ~BtVS 1.11 "Out of Mind Out of Sight", 3.6 "Band Candy"

“Sacked you say? And so many months ago. No, I hadn't realized that. Yes, I will certainly be on the look out for her.” Giles tried not to take any notice of Cordelia rolling her eyes as he tried, once again, to get off the phone as quickly as possible. But Phillip, the Council's lead man on the issue of the Chalmer's murder, would not be gotten rid of until he had thoroughly explained all his suspicions regarding the possible, but by no mean certain involvement, of disgraced former watcher Gwendolyn Post.

“Do you indeed.” Giles continued answering , as briefly and as noncommittally as possible. “Yes, well, that would be awful. No not awfully free at the moment I'm afraid. Yes, pitchers, ships, etc. Precisely.” At least Cordelia's presence was turning out to be good for something if only as an excuse to end this intensely guilt inducing interview.

“Well?” Cordelia demanded, when Giles finally managed to hang up the phone without cutting Philip off mid-sentence, “Are you going to help me with this or am I going to have to have a long heart to heart with the queen of your little nerd herd.”

Giles took a deep, calming breath. It didn't work terribly well, but at least he managed not to shout. “Look just... leave her out of it, alright. Believe me, the threat of being publicly humiliated by all this is more than incentive enough without, well any of the erm additional consequences that could potentially ensue.”

“God!” Cordelia declared, once again voicing her unvarnished frustration and contempt, “Be a bigger stiff. I plead temporary insanity. It's the only possible explanation!”

“Be that as it may,” Giles countered thinly, “it seems evident that we are, fundamentally, in agreement regarding what's to be done. It's just a question of methods, really.”

“Yeah,” Cordelia confirmed, suddenly, curiously, unable to meet his eyes. “So help me think of some already.” For all her brash talk about murder and blackmail and the like, she still seemed somewhat emotionally conflicted, despite being firmly decided on her course of action. Which one would be, he supposed, given the upbringing she had obliquely but not at all ambiguously described.

“Am I correct in assuming that our two chief priorities in that regard are your personal safety and concealing, as far as possible, what it is we are undertaking and why?” Giles asked, suddenly finding it much easier to be patient with her.

Cordelia nodded. Tears shone in her eyes but didn't quite fall before she managed to turn her face away on the very thin excuse of examining the contents of his kitchen counter for no declarable reason. “Then I suspect that our most fruitful line of inquiry is likely to be pharmaceuticals,” he went on, trying his best to sound decisive and supportive at the same time. Firm. Dependable. Comforting.

He wasn't sure how well that was going. Cordelia could only nod again. Still needlessly ashamed of being seen or heard to cry. Dear God, she was literally no more than a child. They all were. **What, no pithy counter point?** _No, that's about right. Hell, that's half the fun._


	19. Dodge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: I-i-it's-it's a kill-in-the-day monster! A hundred percent for sure.  
> Giles: Which more than likely makes our murderer...  
> Buffy: Human.  
> Xander: Did I mention that I *hate* this school?  
> Buffy: No, wait. I-I'm not buying, you guys. Remember the Hellmouth?   
> Mystical activity is totally rife here. This to me says demon.  
> Giles: I'd like to think you're right. A demon is a creature of evil,   
> pure and very simple. A person driven to kill is, is, um, it's more   
> complex.  
> Willow: The creep factor is also heightened.   
> ~BtVS 1.9 "The Puppet Show", 3.4 "Beauty and the Beasts".

It was a waiting game. A listening game. Like having a staring contest with your ears. Joyce would blink. She always did. So Buffy lay there in the dark, under her covers, fully dressed. Fully armed. Listening.

At last, just before one a.m., the pacing that had stopped a good fifteen minutes earlier failed to stat up again. Buffy waited a further fifteen minutes. Still no pacing. No TV or radio being switched on. No faucet or shower running. No muffled sobs being cried into pillows.

Buffy knew her mom could never be still for that long. Not when she was in ultra-worry-mode like this. She'd have fretted her self to death if she'd held her fretting in that long. She must have passed out from emotional exhaustion. It was go time.

Buffy had had a lot of time to think about where she should start. So even though she was still far from sure she was right to do it, she knew what she was going to do. Down from the tree she dropped, quiet as a cat and came around the front of the house to the sidewalk, heading towards the edge of town. Towards the Bronze.

Xander had to know she was after him. Which gave him only four choices, really. If that.

He could have gotten the hell town like anyone with half a brain would do. But from what Buffy had gathered from Sheila and others, as well as his behavior since he'd been vamped, she figured he was too arrogant and stupid for that. He'd have found it pretty easy to convince himself that whatever obsessive vampire game he was playing with Willow made it impossible for him to take the boring (meaning safe) way out.

He could have hidden out underground with the Master's minions. Maybe. But according to Angelus, they didn't let just anybody in that little club. Especially not a wet-behind-the-ears kid whose seriously dead sire wasn't there to take responsibility for him. If he found a place among them at all, it would be as the lowest of the low. A grovelling slave with way too many masters and a very short un-life-expectancy.

He cold have holed up somewhere and laid seriously low, not coming out day or night. But realistically, he would have needed an accomplice for that. Someone to bring him food. Fresh blood if not living victims. The list of humans who might do even the former was probably limited to Willow and his mother, and frankly, at this point, that was stretching it. It also didn't seem likely that he could have met a vampire that would be willing to bother so quickly. Not when he had nothing to offer in return.

Which left the forth possibility. The one Buffy was tentatively banking on. The monster that now wore the face of Willow's dead friend would be out prowling alright, looking for the one thing he couldn't 'live' without. But not out in the open if he could help it. Not out in the streets where Buffy could corner him in a blind alley and take him one on one.

No, he would be looking for someplace crowded and dark. A place with plenty of potential victims and plenty of cover. A familiar place where he would be able to blend. At least as long as no one could see or hear very well, and where it would be impossible for anyone, maybe even the Slayer, to readily identify him for what he was.

There was only one place like that in Sunnydale. Xander almost had to be at the Bronze.

Buffy didn't see Xander, or anything unusual, the first few minutes she was in the club. But that didn't mean anything. That was sort of the point of this place. At least if you happened to be a vampire. And she could definitely sense that there were at least a couple of them hanging around somewhere nearby.

Like, for example, Angelus. Leaning against the bar. Drinking either rum and coke or coke and coke out of a skinny little faceted bar glass. The only one to be seen in a sea of plastic cups, glass bottles, and coffee mugs.

What was he doing here? Trying to blend? Among other things, probably. But the blending part at least was not working. Xander might have blended here. He might actually _be_ blending here at this very moment. But Angelus was not blending. He was sticking out.

That was what he did. He stuck out. It had been the same in the warehouse full of vampires, and not just because they were all trying to kill him. It was like he was wrapped in a huge prickly overcoat of not belonging that served him just as well in every setting, no matter who or what he stood apart from.

Of course, he did have the whole alienated loner look going on, what with the jacket and the hair and the forehead and everything. But it was more than that. A phrase popped into Buffy's mind, the title of something she might or might not have seen but definitely didn't remember. 'A Man Without a Country'. Whatever wedge Angelus had driven between himself and his own kind to get to the point of trying to team up with the Slayer against them, it had not made him any more fit to mix with humans.

Buffy tried to snap herself out of that whole train of thought. Tried to laugh at herself for being stupid dramatic about a vampire's imaginary feelings just because he was mysterious and hot. Tried to...

Buffy was so stunned that she froze, inside and out, barely able to have a thought, let alone take a step. Oh crap. She had just thought what she had just thought she had just thought, hadn't she? Worse. She was still thinking it. Suddenly, she couldn't look at him and not think it. Oh this was so not good. The only way it could have been more not good was if he had seen her and waved for her to come over, just like, like...

Angelus looked up from his glass and saw Buffy. The look on his face was not quite a smile, but it was a look of definite recognition. Recognition of the not-hostile variety. And, just as she was thinking that at least that probably meant he wasn't hear to hunt, that no one could look that calm about having been caught in the act by someone who could kill them about it, it happened. He forced a smile onto his face and waved to her. Waved for her to come over. Just like a normal guy. Like a friend.

Then an even worse thing happened. Angelus, the legendary mass-murdering scourge of Europe, started to look worried. About her. Damn. If he was acting, he was a good actor.

Suddenly, Buffy was unfrozen by a deep inner wellspring of molten anger. She let it seep through her body as she made her deliberate, unhurried way towards the vampire. She locked eyes with him green laser beams of contempt boring into smoky-dark pits of pretentious gravity. His expression became graver still, which only made her madder.

When she got within about four feet of him, Angelus opened his mouth, probably to greet Buffy and act like they were actual friends. Like he could be anyone's friend. Like anyone could be hers. “Save it,” she said, sharply, quickly closing in to a conversational distance. “I believe you about hating the Master. Don't insult me by pretending you care about anything beyond what I can do to help you with that.”

Angelus's eyes flashed as a sudden stab of what looked like pain but was probably anger shot through him. Then he hung his head slightly and avoided eye contact until he could make his expression unreadable again. It didn't take long.

Buffy didn't know whether to sigh with relief or seethe with indignation. Present company being what it was, she rolled her eyes instead. How could she have thought even for a moment that he might be playing it straight with her? It was definitely the hotness, factor, she decided. Involuntarily reacting to him like he was a real person was throwing her whatch-out-for-not-persons alarm out of whack. Which just meant she had to keep her guard up even more, that was all.

To his credit, Angelus didn't waste any more words trying to sell Buffy on his supposed humanesque qualities and motives. He knew why she was there, and he got right to the point. “The Harris boy isn't here,” he explained flatly. “He's working tonight.”

Buffy must have looked as pissed as she felt at his blasé attitude towards hunting human's for food, which was the only kind of 'work' she could imagine a vampire doing; because Angelus rushed to correct her misapprehension even before she could say a word about it. “Not hunting, working. He's tending bar over at Willy's now.”

“What?” Buffy was completely lost now. “Why?”

“Because he's not as dumb as he seems, probably,” Angelus suggested. “Willy may be a groveling little slime-ball that barely qualifies as human, but at least he's good at it. He's got a complex set of longstanding arrangements with everyone from City Hall to the Pacific Coast Slime Demon's Association. That makes Willy's one of the few places for a vampire to work in this town that's square with the Master without being directly under his thumb.”

Buffy tried but she still didn't get it. “Why though? What would he be working for?”

“For blood and beers,” Angelus explained coolly. “That's the usual arrangement anyway. And a place to come in out of the sun.” Angelus's words seemed light, glib even. But his face and voice were still ultra serious. Grim.

“Having a job is a way for a vampire to avoid having to hunt or be hunted,” Angelus continued, sounding just a little bit teachery now. “For someone who still feels tied to his human past, still likes to believe he has something to loose, it can be an attractive option. A way to stay out of trouble and hopefully avoid burning at least a bridge or two.”

Angelus paused dramatically. Expectantly. Was he hinting at some deeper significance to the fact of Xander's employment or was he just trying to sound darkly significant on general principals?Probably both, because a moment later the vampire sighed, rolled his eyes and petulantly clarified, “Look, he was working there weeks before Dr. Rosenberg was killed. And if he'd fallen off the wagon, I doubt he would have started with his best friend's father. Or that he would have bothered to clock in for his last two shifts if he didn't need the blood. Especially knowing the Slayer was bound to come looking for him."

And there it was. The oh so carefully obscured spring loaded for Buffy to step on and slam the trap shut on herself. Knowing damned well what Angelus was insinuating and why, Buffy feigned ignorance out of force of habit, or maybe just plain annoyance. “Wait, what are you saying?” she asked, giving her best look of infuriating blone-girl confusion.

“I'm saying,” Angelus almost growled in exasperation, “He's not your guy.” 'Oh, yeah, that's right' Buffy thought, silently celebrating the tiny triumph of figuring out Angelus's scam. Suddenly it was just so obvious.

Angelus was putting together his own crew to challenge the Master for dominance. Getting one of his recruits to kill someone close enough to the Slayer to piss her off but not close enough to break her down, then pinning the whole thing on the other side, that was clearly all part of his master plan. Buffy was sure of it.

Until Angelus added, “In fact, I'd say your guy's probably human, considering Dr. Rosenberg was killed during the day.”

 


	20. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyanka: This is the real world now. This is the world we made. Isn't it wonderful?  
> ~BtVS 3.9 "The Wish"

Willow tried to sleep. She wanted to sleep. She'd have given almost anything for a few hours of near oblivion. But that wasn't happening. Not tonight. Not in any future that she could readily imagine.

Being back in her own bed, at last, should have helped. It didn't. For one thing, her own bed was in her own house. Where her father had lived and died. Where he had been murdered. For another, her best guy friend was probably being murdered right now by her best girlfriend.

No, not girlfriend, just girl friend. Not that that even mattered now. Because it certainly shouldn't. What with all the murders and everything. How shallow and horrible would a person have to be to waste her emotional energy on parsing the difference between like and like-like at a time like this? At a time when the world was turning in on itself and going completely insane.

And hey, since when were girls who were friends on the list of people you had to worry about like versus like-like with anyway? Wasn't that more or less the point of being friends with girls? The not having to worry about that? Okay, there had been some moments. Just a tiny bit with Sheila, and long, long ago with Amy. But they had never been anything that couldn't be ignored. Not until Buffy.

Of course, for that matter, since when were vampires on the potentially-like-likable-and-therefore-to-cause-worry list? Or middle-aged librarians? Or people who killed your father?

So that was it. No sleep tonight. Not for Willow. Not much of anything else either. She just lay there. It took enough energy, really. The just laying there.

Willow was in a space. A space in between holding up and breaking down. A space where screaming or crying would have been both a pointless excess of drama and a painfully inadequate attempt at release. A space between even entertaining the thought of getting up and going to school tomorrow and contemplating drowning yourself in a brook. A space where either seemed equally mad. And equally pointless.

So she stared at the ceiling for another couple of hours. And then a couple more. When she heard the knock at her window, she looked at her clock. Five a.m. Night sagging under the weight of the impending morning. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

She knew who it was. The only 'person' she knew who could knock on a balcony window without making any climbing sounds first. Which, Willow realized, made her feel relieved, but not very.

So Xander was alive, sort of. That didn't mean Buffy was going to stop hunting him or that Willow's position in the middle of this and so many interconnecting triangles of love and death was going to get any better.

He knocked again. Bolder than previous nights. Probably because of all the normal-people-like talking on the phone they had been doing. Everything and nothing like old times. “Come on, Will,” he pleaded, bolder still. “It's practically sunrise... or anyway, it will be. And I can't go home. Let me in.”

It was stupid. Willow knew that. She would have had to be stupid not to know that. And Willow was not stupid. Not at all. It wasn't that she was so sure Xander was really Xander and not angling to get inside and drain her blood for the hell of it. It was more like, if it all came down to living in a world where she had to let her best friend fry because she couldn't trust him, then why bother.

Willow pulled the curtains back and swung the French doors wide. Xander grinned. It made him look every inch a vampire, in spite of the perfectly human face he showed her. There was something hard in that smile. Something very un-Xander, triumphant and predatory. Too pleased with his success in getting her to open up.

Willow hesitated, her mouth open to speak an invitation she more than half expected to regret. Xander's expression might have hardened at this turn, but it softened instead. “Hey,” he sighed, somewhere between understanding and dejected, “I get it. No problem. I guess I can always join the sewer crew after all. Hell, maybe Buffy's right. Maybe I belong down there. With all the other monsters.”

Willow's heart caved in just a little. He was actually turning to go. She didn't know what part of herself she hated more, the part that felt miserably guilty for even thinking of doubting his intentions or the part that was boredly observing that he was laying it own a little thick, even for Xander, angling to get what he wanted. Like always.

“Xander, wait!” she called out as he made as if to leap from the balcony railing. He turned. His smile was softer. Subtler. But clearly still there. Still triumphant at her expense. “Come in,” Willow whispered. In spite of the warning-knot in her stomach. In spite of everything.

Xander was her friend, and he was in trouble. Worse trouble than she had ever thought would be a part of her real life up until a few months ago. There was a Slayer, basically a superhero, looking for him. Looking to kill him. He didn't have anywhere else to go.

Willy, his now ex-boss, Xander explained, as they sat next to each other on the bed, had been decent enough (or crooked enough) to hide him when Buffy and Angel had come calling. But after they had gone, he'd thrown him out with nothing but the clothes on his back. It was nothing personal, he'd explained. The Slayer and her new friend were just more trouble than any businessman wanted in his establishment. Separately or together.

“Wait,” Willow interrupted, seriously puzzled. “What new friend? Who's Angel, Angel who?”

“Oh,” Xander said, his casual surprise just a bit too synthetic to be convincing, “You mean she didn't tell you? The whole time this Buffy chick has been pouring poison in your ear about me being such a dangerous, no-good, soul-less demon? Yeah, she's been hanging out with Angelus. Sharing secrets. Planning plans. I don't know who or what, exactly, they're hunting besides me, but there is definitely more to this than humans versus vampires."


	21. The Faces that Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willow: You were scared, you kept a secret, you know? That's-it-it's okay.  
> I mean, secrets aren't bad. You know, they're normal. They're better than normal. They're good. Secrets are good. Must be a reason why we keep them, right?  
> ~BtVS 3.7 "Revelations"

Once again the phone rang and kept ringing. Exactly as if it had been manually disconnected in order to avoid answering any incoming phone calls. “*Still?*” Sheila asked, the worry in her eyes belying the annoyance in her voice. Giles nodded, barely able to look at her.

“That's it,” the young girl declared resolutely. “I'm going over there.”

Giles's head snapped up in surprise. “Oh no you're not,” he insisted just as firmly. Then, trying to give the explanation her eyes demanded, he elaborated. “Look, you, you, you heard what Buffy said. She's invited that, that vampire into her home. He could be there with her right now!”

“Yeah, that's—!” Sheila tried to interrupt. But Giles would not have it.

“I can't,” he cut her off sternly, “I *won't* let you risk—I'll go myself. That's all, I'll go myself.”

“Yeah?” Sheila challenged. “So what are you going to say to her mom if they aren't being held hostage by an evil witch or killed by a vampire?”

That shut Giles's mouth for a moment. It was good point, but—but—“I, I don't care!” Giles heard himself saying. “I just—I have to get to her, that's all. I have to make sure—she— She just has to be alright.”

Giles made as if to get his coat, then turned around and took two steps towards his weapon's chest instead before turning towards the coat rack again. Sheila caught him firmly by the arm. “Dude, snap out of it,” she admonished him firmly but not unkindly. “Get it together. Buffy is on vampire detail. She can handle Xander. If he's at Willow's, she's there killing him right now. The one we have to worry about is Amy Madison.”

 _She's not wrong_ , the demon agreed, evidently trying to be helpful. _You know, unless she's wrong about this Amy chick altogether. We should probably go find her and check her out, just to be safe._ Or perhaps not.

Giles sighed, rubbing his temples as much for an excuse to hide his eyes for a moment as because of the fact that his head was throbbing. “And why is it again,” he asked “that you are so sure this Ms. Madison is the witch? She, she hasn't struck again or, or given herself away publicly, or, or—”

Sheila rolled her eyes. “You know, for someone who talks all the damn time, you're not that great at it. At least when you're not—” Sheila stopped abruptly and colored just a little. Giles hung his head. She didn't need to say it. The only time she'd ever seen him not being a stammering idiot was when he'd swaggered up to her in that pest hole of a bar and, taking her for a common prostitute, propositioned her for sex as casually as if he were ordering takeout.

“Noted,” he managed crisply, without looking directly at her. This was no time to get bogged down in regret for his many, many sins. “But we've got to get to Willow's. You can tell me more about your... suspicions regarding Ms. Madison on the way.”

“Well, like I already said,” Sheila began impatiently, as they shrugged into their coats and each grabbed a weapon or two suitable for concealing about their persons. “According to Willow, Amy wants to be a cheerleader to get her psycho mom off her back about being such a fat useless lump. Which tracks, cuz Crazygirl has been starving herself for months. And even then she had no chance until Buffy burned the school down and all the cheerleaders scattered like everybody else.”

Giles nodded and made attentive noises, encouraging Sheila to continue her narrative as they headed for her van. “So then suddenly, it's a doable thing,” Sheila explained, climbing behind the wheel. “Cheerleaders are mostly the rich, snobby girls. So most of them didn't even end up at Fondren. But there were still three guaranteed slots on the team for Sunnydale girls. At that point, just taking out Joy and Amber gives her a chance. And what's taking out one or two more if she has to? Doable,” Sheila concluded triumphantly as she pulled into traffic and immediately began exceeding the speed limit.

That much, Giles had to admit, made sense. No one had connected Amber's internal combustion to Joy's disappearance earlier in the week. It wasn't even clear at first if she had disappeared or just ditched school for a couple of days. Until this morning, when Joy's parents had come home from a business trip and found her lying inert on her bed, eyes wide and staring. Alive, but totally unresponsive. It had made the news only for the shocking circumstance of Joy's hair having turned completely, inexplicably, white.

So, yes, that much made a certain amount of sense. The witch was a Sunnydale girl just transferred to Fondren High and targeting cheerleaders to clear a space for herself on the squad. If everything Sheila was saying were true, then that certainly made Amy Madison a likely suspect. “But what I don't understand,” Giles tried to clarify as they drove on through a thick mist that was beginning to coalesce into rain, “Is why you feel Willow in particular may be in danger from her. That is to say, apart from being young and beautiful and delightfully optimistic, she's the furtherest thing from a cheerleader. Isn't she?”

“Yeah,” Sheila scoffed in a voice like eyes rolling, “If that was the whole thing. But it isn't. I told you about the dolls. What are you braindead?”

“Evidently,” Giles replied dryly, feeling stung by such a casual insult to his most prized attribute, despite the source.

“Look, it's simple,” Sheila explained, as if she were taking his admission of stupidity entirely seriously. When I went over there—”

“Without telling a living soul,” Giles couldn't help interjecting, still baffled and frankly a bit angered by her near total lack of self-preservation instinct.

“Yeah,” Sheila agreed briskly, refusing to argue the wisdom of her decision again. “So, there were all these dolls hanging around. Including one with it's hands and face burnt off, and one that just—it was Willow. That's all, it just was. I should have grabbed it. I keep thinking I should have grabbed it, but someone was coming, Amy or her mom, and I had to get out of there.”

Steeling himself for the reaction he kept getting, Giles tried again to follow through with the conversation that kept failing. _Definition of insanity, man._ **No, not really. That's just one of those things people say.** To hell with the demon. What did it know about anything other than bird dogging underage girls. “But you can't know that it was Willow. Just because the doll was redheaded...”

“It had a lab coat on,” Sheila insisted as if this settled the matter entirely. Then, exasperated, “Look, I don't know *why* she would pick on Willow, but she could be dead by the time we figure that out. We just need to find Willow, and stop Amy, so get all this vampire junk out of your head and focus already!”

Giles sighed and shook his head. There was no arguing with her. At any rate, they were both agreed on the need to make sure Willow was alright. And after that? Well, they'd have to see. The important thing was—Giles's train of thought suddenly derailed as Sheila pulled the van to a stop in front of Willow's home.

Memories broke free and assailed him from the depths of his subconscious. Memories of a confrontation. A violent one, that had taken place right here, just inside that very door. *Ira, taken by surprise. Shocked that he could be surprised. Glass shattering. Flesh ripping. Blood spraying. All in the absence of emotion; horrifying only in retrospect.*

 **Oh, dear God, no!** There had been no emotion, because there had been no conscious understanding of what was happening. But *now...* **No, no, God have mercy, no!** _Oh for the love of Lucy, it was what needed to happen. You knew it as well as I did. And once I saw that he couldn't read you in your sleep, the answer was obvious._

**No! No! You bastard! How could you do this to us? Willow will never for—** _Willow will never know. Not unless you're stupid enough to tell her._ **Oh, dear God!** _Never mind about him. You know I'm right and you know you're going to listen to me. Because you want to. So be cool, suck it up, and let's go check on your girlfriend._

“Whoa, Giles,” Sheila sounded actually worried. “Are you alright?”

It was a ridiculous question. He was half slumped over against the glove box, holding on with both hands, heart beating hard and fast, cold sweat beading on his forehead. What she really meant to ask was whether he was having some sort of spell or attack that required emergency medical attention.

Giles straightened himself up and (doing his best to laugh off Sheila's concern and reassure her that he was only worried, not dying) dismounted from the vehicle. “I'm fine,” he insisted repeatedly as they all but ran up the front walk. “As long as Willow is alright, I'll be fine.”

And Willow was. Alright. She seemed sad and tired, but otherwise... Willow was alright. She was alone in the house. No vampires. (Hardly a great shock, considering Xander really was innocent, of this crime at least.) No witches. Not even her mom, who inconceivable as it seemed was actually at the University giving a lecture.

“Amy?” Willow asked doubtfully when Sheila voiced her concerns. “But what could she possible have against me? I mean I kind of stopped hanging out with her because she couldn't get along with—” The sudden, sharp stab of sadness in Willow's eyes made it clear whose name she was not saying. “But, but still. We've always been... friendly at least. I think.”

Sheila shrugged and gave her a sour, half amused, face scrunching sort of look. “Yeah,” she said, “But that's on the outside. On the inside, who knows what people are really up to?”

 


End file.
